Chasing Light: Things to come …

The Snake River, between Montezuma and Keystone Resort, Summit County, Colorado, flows blue-tinged by heavy metals in the water during the early fall low-flow season.

Early season ice forms deep in the canyon of Summit County, Colorado’s Snake River, tinted by pollution in the water and by mid-autumn’s deep blue shadows.

By contrast, this mid-October ice formation along Meadow Creek, near Frisco, Colorado, is fed by unpolluted water from a drainage that doesn’t have great mineral deposits.

Up close ice crystals — after observing the formation of ice and frost crystals in different areas, I’m convinced that the presence of metals in the waters of the Snake River lead to different types of crystal formation than in untainted water. Or, looked at differently, the chemical makeup of each water source in part determines the process of crystal formation.

I know it seems a little early to post ice pictures, but I wanted to give you shutterbugs a chance to plan a trip if you’re interested in pursuing these types of images, perhaps capturing that elusive first ice in mid-September. If any readers are interested in an autumn fall environmental photo workshop, please leave a comment at the end of the post and I’ll contact you. Follow my Twitter stream for more information.

Three of the shots are taken along the Snake River in Summit County, just a couple of miles from Keystone Resort. The stream is featured in the latest installment of the Independent’s Rocky Mountain Climate Watch Series. The story details how global warming could be worsening water quality in already tainted stream.

The pollution-tinged water photographs beautifully, setting up what I call the classic “terrible beauty” paradox — creating an aesthetically memorable image while trying to tell the story of environmental degradation.

If you do seek out similar scenes, be prepared to get your feet wet on the slippery boulders along, or even in, the streams! All the shots in this set are taken with an iPhone 4. The first three images were filtered in the Instagram app. The ice closeup shot was edited on Apple’s built-in iPhoto.