Clear Creek Canyon

Author's Comments

The canyon does not give you light easily. That is the first thing to understand. Highway 6 runs the length of it, and the walls climb so steeply on both sides that direct sun reaches the creek for only a narrow window each day. Most of the time you are working in reflected light, the kind that bounces off the rock above and falls onto the water already softened. This is a gift if you came to make long exposures. The shadow holds, the water moves, and a two second frame at the right pullout becomes something quieter than you expected. I come here in late May, when the runoff is loud and the creek is moving real volume between the boulders. The water turns from clear to something closer to jade where it pools, then white where it breaks. I work early. Mornings before the canyon fills with traffic noise and the light is still cool against the metamorphic rock, which is older than almost anything else you will photograph in Colorado. Precambrian. The kind of stone that does not care about your shutter speed. The pullouts are the practical answer. Park, scramble down, find a composition you can live with for ten minutes. The detail work is as good as the wide work here, maybe better. A single boulder split by current. The seam where two rock faces meet at the waterline. I do not think Clear Creek is a place that announces itself. It is a place you have to slow down inside of, which is exactly why I keep driving up Highway 6 when I could be going somewhere more obvious.

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