Columbine Along the Trail to Arapaho Pass

            Most of my best images involve hours or days of scouting, then repeated tries before the light and weather finally cooperate.  Every now and then, however, Lady Luck bestows an astonishing blessing.  For three days prior to making this image, I’d worked hard but come up with only one mediocre shot.  Then, on the fourth and last morning of the shoot, I set my alarm wrong and woke up far too late to work on the idea I had in mind.  Frustrated and annoyed, I hurried up the trail anyhow, hoping to salvage something from what looked like another wasted day.  A mile and a half up the Arapaho Pass trail in Colorado’s Indian Peaks Wilderness, I came across this spectacular but incredibly fragile clump of columbine, Colorado’s state flower.  With my Zone VI 4x5 field camera smack in the middle of the trail and passersby stepping over the tripod legs, I composed this image with Mt. Neva in the background, then shot it with Kodak Pro 100 film.  Columbine Along the Trail to Arapaho Pass quickly became my all-time best seller.