Sunrise in the Snowys

For my first morning in the Snowys, I had decided that I would go back to Lake Marie to shoot star trails over the lake, sunrise, and with any luck spend the morning walking around the lake.

I left camp before 3am to clear skies and had a short drive up to the lake.  Another nice thing about choosing Lake Marie is that it is just a short 100 yard walk from the parking lot.  Normally I do not like to go for the "parking lot shots" but having such a fantastic view of an under photographed location, and add in that I was basically going from 500' to 9,000 feet in elevation and I was just adjusting to the altitude-it all seemed to work out.  Well except for the lack of clouds......

In what seems to be the norm in the Rockies for me, it is cloudless sunrises.  Now, I had thought that I could do star trails over the lake but even at 3:15 in the morning the stars are already fading fast and there was a very long gray twilight.  Those northern latitudes and their long days were in effect.  I tried a couple images that just did not work.  I went over to the cascade at the edge of the lake and did some twilight images where I light painted the water, then waited for the sunrise.

When the sun hit the peaks I started making images trying to capture the beauty of the morning, the lake, and the mountains.

After getting the top image here, I started working along the shore of the lake and picked up the second image.  By 6:15am it was full sunny.  I decided to pack up and go for a hike to check out some of the other lakes in the area.