The Crown

I’d driven four hours and then waited another three for roughly four minutes of light, and that was the cost of this photograph.

We’d left Crested Butte in the middle of the night and reached the parking lot just before six, which already held far more cars than I’d expected at that hour. Most people were still sitting in them. I got out immediately to claim a position, on the grounds that I hadn’t come this far to end up in the back row, and left my wife asleep in the car — and me walking off seemed to set everybody else in motion. Two photographers were already down at the water when I arrived. It was my first time there, so working out where I wanted to be took a while, and I’m glad I sorted it out early, because they kept coming and by the time the light started the shoreline was shoulder to shoulder.

Of everywhere I’ve made a landscape photograph, only Mesa Arch was more crowded, and that’s a much smaller space with probably fewer people in it. There was no peace in this one at all.

When the sun finally touched the peaks the true alpenglow held for about four minutes, and the pink was off the mountains inside fifteen. I shot from the first moment to the last. It’s one of the most beautiful places in this country and I doubt I’ll go back with a camera, which is a large part of why I’m glad this one worked.

This was the first stop of a very long day that also produced Schism, from the pass at lunchtime, and Narrow Gauge, at the end of it in a Colorado meadow.

Because it was a drought year the lake was low, so I cropped tighter than I’d planned and cleaned up a few stones breaking the surface where the reflection should have been. The aspens were unaffected — they were at full colour and gave me everything.