Frozen In Time
Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
( Click on image to access high resolution virtual tour. Not for mobile devices.)
Feb. 6, 2026 – As the chilly fall breezes succumb to the icy gales of winter in the Colorado high country, time seems to slow to nearly a stop as the land settles into it’s winter sleep. I had heard of the frozen waves that occur in winter at Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park for years and had wanted to hike up there to see and photograph them. The frozen ice waves are an unbelievable wintertime phenomenon that is caused by freezing temperatures and strong dry winds. It is called sublimation, which is the process where solid ice changes directly into a gas without becoming a liquid first. Dream Lake experiences incredibly strong dry winds during the winter months. Eddy currents of the dry air blowing across the ice surfaces slowly, but surely, wears patterns in ice’s surface. In locations near logs or rocks this is exacerbated even more.
However the thought of hiking to Dream Lake in the dead of winter wasn’t my idea of a “good time”. Last week a fellow photographer, one of my students I am teaching how to do gigapixel photography, asked me to go with him. So finally just 6 days shy of my 75th birthday I finally did it. Being a consummate gigapixel wall mural photographer, of course I was determine to shoot one of my trademark gigapixel photos of the scene. Over the past couple weeks folks had been posting photos of the ice waves on social media. I wanted to capture something that went beyond just another “me-too” shot.
This is a focus stacked, stitched image made up of 7090 individual focus bracketed images. This yielded 225 focus stacked sets in a 9 row by 25 column array. I was using my Canon R5 with a 100-400mm f/4.0-5.6 lens with a Nodal Ninja M2 head on my carbon fiber tripod. Settings were 300mm, f/11, 1/100th sec., ISO 400. My nearest focal point was about 8 ft. from the camera that was mounted about 2-1/2 ft. above the frozen surface of the lake.
The image as shown is:
- 4.63 Gigapixels
- 93,696 x 93,276 pixels
- 165″ x 310″ (13 ft. 9 in. x 25 ft. 10 in.) 300 PPI original image size
- Available in 1:2 ratio 12″ x 24″ up to 48″ x 96″ (Slight Crop) on Standard Plaque, AlumiPress or PlexiPlaq
- Bi-Panels up to 96″ x 96″ on Standard Plaque, AlumiPress or PlexiPlaq
- Wall murals up to 13 ft. 9 in. x 25 ft. 10 in. 300 PPI
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- Standard Plaque prints are available in four Finish Choices. Finishes are acid-free and ultra violet (UV) light protected, shielding it against fading and deterioration and can be wiped down with water or any ammonia-free cleaners.
- We highly recommend the Metalized Paper for prints, plaques and PlexiPlaq products. This special paper does an excellent job of bringing out the detail of the photos.
- All of our plaques are produced by Duraplaq on photo quality High Density boards. Numerous Mounting Styles are available along with many Edge Treatments.
- Approximate lead time for shipping of Prints is 1 week. Plaque mounts and other options 2 weeks.
Mounting Options
The above sizes and mounting options are a small subset of the overall mounting options we have. We offer all of our photos on a variety of mounting options from just prints, framed, plaque mounting, Aluminum Prints, or Plexiplaq. We also offer Tri-Panel, Quad-Panel or Wall Clusters & Splits. Most of our Gigaramas are available as wall murals. We also license our photos for various commercial applications.