Luna Lake

Author's Comments

Luna Lake does not announce itself. You drive past it on the way to somewhere else, and if you are not paying attention you will miss what it offers, which is a quiet kind of photograph that asks you to slow down. The lake sits high, almost eight thousand feet, and the air at that elevation does something to the light I have not quite figured out how to describe. Cleaner, maybe. Less filtered. The kind of clarity that makes Escudilla Mountain in the distance feel both closer and further than it is. I come here in late September, when the grasslands have gone gold and the ospreys are still working the lake before they leave for the season. Golden hour is the hour. The water lays down in the last twenty minutes before sunset and the reflection becomes worth waiting for, especially from the viewing platform on the east side where the elevation gives you just enough lift to separate the foreground wetland from the lake itself. That separation is the photograph. Grass, water, mountain, sky, in horizontal bands that stack cleanly when the light is right. Bring the long lens for the birds, but do not let it pull you away from the wider frame. The shorebirds are a gift on the days they are there and absent on the days they are not, and you cannot plan for them. What you can plan for is the light on the mountain at the end of the day, and the way the lake holds it for a few minutes before letting it go. I have rarely had to share this place with anyone. That is part of what it is.

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