Aspens Last Glow
Last light on Aspen trees San Juan National Forest, Colorado This fall I spent a week exploring Colorado with my coworker Ana. We started in Denver, drove to Breckenridge (met up with Nick Selway), had our car break down in Crested Butte, and eventually made our way to the San Juan mountains before flying back home. The majority of the trip was spent near the San Juans and we had clear skies every single day. Clear skies are great -- except when you want to photograph grand vistas and need clouds in the sky to make something interesting. I spent most of the time making the best of the light and photographed intimate scenes. There was one reason for shooting grand scenes though -- Milky Way photos. On a clear night, face south and the Milky Way will rise over the mountains. As much as I hated having to lose a day on the trip for our broken-down car, there were some positives: our replacement vehicle was a beast of a Ford Expedition that handled the rough terrain of Last Dollar Road like a champ. The extra clearance proved handy multiple times. Towards the end of the road, as we neared Telluride, we came across this viewpoint of the San Juan mountains with a beautiful patch of aspen trees changing color in front of them. We waited for the sun to sink well below the horizon and for the Milky Way to come out, snapped some photos, and then raced back to the hotel to get some dinner before everything closed down. D850 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8: Foreground: 60mm, f/9, 0.6 sec, ISO 640 Sky: 24mm, f/2.8, 15sec, ISO 6400 After Ana and I spent a few days in Breckenridge and Crested Butte we made our way over to the San Juan mountains. We used the town of Ridgway as our "home base", which has a hotel or two, some decent food, and is central to all of the mountains and trees. Typically the San Juan mountains are photographed using wider angle compositions -- there's stunning mountains all over that look beautiful with the color aspen trees. These scenes, however, need clouds to make the scenes interesting. Without clouds you either come home with no portfolio photos or you have to adapt. I put away the wide angle lenses and looked to my telephoto lenses to make beautiful photos. We had spent the entire day driving up and down different county roads scouting the different scenes and looking for great groves of trees. Ana had photographed this particular spot in a previous trip because of a criss-crossing fence she really liked. As we drove in at sunset we saw the last light glowing on the yellow Aspen trees and I pulled over and grabbed the long lens to get the last light on the trees before it died. We stayed another hour and photographed the Milky Way and went home happy campers. D850 w/Nikkor 80-200mm: 100mm f/7.1, 13 sec, ISO 320
2019Aaron Meyers PhotographyColoradoCounty RoadCounty Road 5D850Mount SneffelsMountainMt SneffelsMt. SneffelsNational ForestNikonNikon D850OurayOuray CountyRidgwaySan JuanSan Juan MountainsSneffelsSneffels RangeUncompahgreUncompahgre National Forestautumncolorfallfall colorfall colorslandscapelong exposurenaturesnowstarssunset
