About the Image(s)

This photo was shot in Rocky Mountain National Park along the Old Fall River Road, an unpaved and very crooked road that runs from West Horseshoe Park to the Alpine Visitor Center. It’s a one-lane narrow road but has plenty of places to pull off to the side. So I pulled over and set out to explore the area along the creek that runs beside the road. The morning sun was nicely filtered by the trees. I spotted a female dusky grouse among the boulders and brush near the creek, and noticed some movement nearby. There were at least three poults with her. I followed her and eventually she stopped atop a boulder along with one of the poults. I used a Pentax K-1 with 300mm lens to capture this image. Hand held, shutter set to 1/320 which is my default for this lens for still or slowly moving subjects. Aperture set to f7.1 to provide a sufficiently blurred background. The Pentax K-1 auto-set to ISO1250 which typically is plenty good for this 36mp full frame camera. No filters or other adjustments. In-camera processing set to “Flat” mode. White balance set to “auto”. Initially processed in Lightroom making my routine adjustments (described in detail with last month’s image). Image cropped less than 10%. Used Luminar 4 “AI” settings to adjust structure and fine details, selectively applied to the birds only.