I had reserved a campsite at Silver Bar a few weeks before this trip and hoped the weather would be good. If there were clouds, it would have been pointless to come here at night. The forecast didn't look good, but I stuck it out and kept waking up to see if I could see stars. I woke up at 1:00 and saw stars and no clouds. I was so excited I couldn't go back to sleep!

Eventually I got up and got to the Maroon Bells lake at 4:00, which is what I wanted. When I got there I realized focusing was going to be very hard. I saw another photographer there who told me to just crank up the ISO for test shots and keep refocusing to get it right. Eventually I got the focus spot on. I shot here for several hours.

What is really amazing is that there were absolutely no clouds in the middle of the night, but when the sun came up some cumulus clouds came in which really added to the photos.