July 21, 2014
Wildflower Sunrise, San Juan National Forest, Colorado

The making of this image did not go as planned. I had scouted the area the morning before and found a suitable clump of Rosy Paintbrush or Split-Leaf Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja rhexifolia) and Alpine Avens or Ross's Avens (Acomastylis rossii turbinata) along the shore of the tarn, and the weather forecast was for calm winds at dawn. However, when I arrived at the tarn in time to set up for sunrise yesterday morning, it was breezy enough that the flowers were bobbing all around. Not only that, but someone had tromped through my nice patch of flowers and my foreground was destroyed. Fortunately the clouds were pretty good, so I set up and did the best I could with the untrampled flowers in the foreground. The clouds kept getting better and better, and the sun crested the horizon about where the PhotoPills app said it would, so I just kept making series after series of 7-exposure shots to use in a future HDR in case enough of the flowers were still enough. Sure enough, I was able to make Limoncello out of lemons — to borrow a phrase from Ian Plant.