Fall Colors and First Snow, Colorado

Aspen fall colors and first snow, from Highway 145, San Miguel County, Colorado. (Click image for larger.)

Fantastic aspen fall colors, and the first snow above on the high peaks above treeline. Perfect. A perfect October. 

It doesn't happen like this often. Deciduous trees such as quaking aspen have their own needs. Their leaves are out in the spring and summer to manufacture food, courtesy of the sun's power, and the Earth's nutrients. 

Then, come autumn, the leaves are shed in order to ride out the winter in comfortably wrapped-tight dormancy. 

When the leaves are shed tells the tale. If it's a harsh end to summer, with a hard frost or early snow, our tree friends pretty much just dump their foliage. See you in the spring. But if it happens to be a nice, gentle fall, with cool nights -- not freezing hard yet -- and clear sunny days, then the trees aren't in such a hurry to close the shutters. They slowly back off on their supply of green chlorophyll to their leaves, with its green color that has been masking other colors all along. Like yellows, golds, reds. 

Thus autumn is a kind of forest-weather courtship. A quick breakup, or a love for the ages. It's weather that decides how the date goes.

Which brings us to this year -- 2015 -- in the Four Corners region of southwest Colorado, southeast Utah, and northern Arizona and northwest New Mexico. 

And what an autumn it has been here. Slow and easy, gradual with some rain and snow up on the highest southwest Colorado peaks. But not down lower. Not down in the aspen-spruce-fir forests. 

Fortunately I have been able to experience it myself. In the San Juan mountain range between Rico and Ridgway, Colorado. Of the may photographs I made last week there, this is one of my favorites. The marriage of mountains and forests in autumn in Colorado.

Photo location: San Miguel County, Colorado.

© Copyright 2015 Stephen J. Krieg

Banana Yucca and Cave Towers Ruin, Cedar Mesa

Banana Yucca, Cedar Mesa, Utah.

Late summer in the high desert of southeast Utah. Cedar Mesa, to be more exact. I am exploring some ancient ruins perched on the rim of a side canyon of Mule Canyon. 

I pause before a yucca plant, admiringly. The late afternoon sunlight has the dagger-like leaves and their curly fibrous tendrils aglow. For a brief time my mind is distracted from ancient adobe ruins, and what the people who lived there were like. The Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloans. The ancient ones. I have no doubt they would have admired this plant, too. They used this species for a number of things, but certainly would have also admired its beauty. 

Cave Towers Ruin setting, Mule Canyon

Yucca blades to the upper left, blades straight up. A photographic compositional candy store. I trigger the camera and move on. Much to try to notice here on this peaceful summer evening.

Back at home, doing the so-called "post processing" work of the images on my computer, I decide that the yucca image would make a lovely black and white image. Also called monochrome. Back in my darkroom days it would have been called a silver gelatin print, or something similar. 

Whatever. The point is to admire the photograph well done, the composition and control of values as seen in the mind's eye at the time of exposure. Portrayal. 

One of the tower ruins.

Photo location: Cedar Mesa, San Juan County, southeast Utah.

© Copyright 2015 Stephen J. Krieg

Owachomo Natural Bridge, Summer Sunset

Owachomo Bridge at sunset, July 2015.

Owachomo Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument is the grand old lady of the three massive sandstone bridges within the park. 

It's the oldest one because it's also the thinnest at the middle of its span. Only nine feet thick, many wonder when it will collapse, though I wouldn't bet on any time soon. It could be tomorrow, it could be a hundred years from now. Only the Earth knows.

On July Fourth I happened to be at Owachomo at sunset time. Thunderstorms had been dancing around the park all day, so what might happen at any particular hour was anyone's guess. Thunder rumbling, dark clouds. A savvy outdoors person wonders about if they should be in such an exposed place at that time. Balancing the risk against the possible reward.

The sunset cast a shadow of the Bridge on the opposite canyon wall. 

Then at sunset, the clouds opened a crack to the northwest and the warm yellow sunlight poured through from the upper right of the scene, illuminating Owachomo Bridge. Only in the summer is the sun far enough north to light this side of the Bridge. The dark storm clouds behind served to show it off even more nicely.

After the sun had set, I walked back up the trail to the overlook and made a nicely subtle portrait of the bridge in the dusk.

Owachomo Bridge at dusk, below the thunderstorm clouds, from the visitor overlook.

Photo location: Natural Bridges National Monument, San Juan County, Utah.

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

Copyright © 2015 Stephen J. Krieg

Sipapu Natural Bridge, Summer

Sipapu Natural Bridge, August morning. [Click on image for larger version.]

Down the trail to Sipapu Bridge on a very warm August morning. Almost no shade this early in the day. because the cliffs in this part of White Canyon catch the morning sun full on.

No problem. With sunscreen on my exposed skin and ice water in my daypack, I enjoy a descent of 500 vertical feet from the canyon rim to the bottom. Quickly, in just 0.6 of a mile. You don't have to walk very far forward to have walked down a lot more. Down is forward.

I have my photographic sweet spots on this trail, so familiar to me by now. This is one of them. It's most of the way down, a last look at the western face of the bridge before plunging beneath it. 

On this particular morning, the trademark high desert Utah clear sunny skies predominated. Sun shining from right to left, the far cliffs of Cedar Mesa Sandstone were awash with light, while the span of the immense natural bridge -- sixth largest in the world, second largest outside of China (where the four largest are) -- was in bright shadow. Green riparian vegetation in the bottom of the canyon for a nice color complement.

And a family of three resting nicely in the shade within the composition to give it a bit of scale. 

My hike was just beginning: on to secret locations within the canyon. 

Photo location: Natural Bridges National Monument, San Juan County, Utah. 

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

© 2015 Stephen J. Krieg

Kachina Natural Bridge, Summer

Kachina Natural Bridge from west buttress.

Kachina Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument in southeast Utah is a massive span of Cedar Mesa Sandstone. The youngest of the three bridges in the park, Kachina Bridge is also the youngest one. That's why it's still so thick; it has a lot more stone to shed through the future millennia than its sisters, Sipapu Bridge and Owachomo Bridge.

On a hot summer day, the shade and breezeway-like air movement underneath the bridge are the perfect respite. The trail down from the Loop Drive parking lot is only 0.7 of a mile, but dropping 400 feet in elevation. The trail offers scant shade until you get to the bottom, underneath the bridge. There you feel like lingering, resting, savoring. And it's never crowded with visitors, either. Most of the time you can have it all to yourself. Take a lunch or snacks, and plenty of water. 

The bridge is so massive that, while underneath it, even an ultra wide angle lens can't take it all in. So for this photograph I took three overlapping images and merged them into a super high resolution panoramic file. 

Photo location: Natural Bridges National Monument, San Juan County, southeast Utah.

If you have a large screen, click on the image below for a much larger version.

Kachina Natural Bridge, larger version (click on image).

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

© 2015 Stephen J. Krieg. 

Colorado Western Slope Skyway Scenery

High country view from Colorado 145 west of Telluride.

A glorious late spring drive across a portion of the San Juan Skyway in southwest Colorado. The aspen forests have leafed out and so the lower forests are greener than green. Which makes them a nice counterpoint to the higher, bluer peaks in the distance, and the clear blue sky.

Looking south to the Mount Sneffels Wilderness from Hwy. 62, above Ridgway, Colorado.

The verdant green of an aspen and oak forested ridge provides a color and perspective complement.

Later I drove across the western portion of Grand Mesa. While camping there, I saw a cinnamon colored black bear in the forest, which didn't know I was there. Though I would have loved to have gotten a photo.

Looking off Grand Mesa, down toward Cedaredge, Colorado.

Then it was down off the southwest side of Grand Mesa, into the beautiful little town of Cedaredge, then into the larger but still lovely town of Delta.

As always, click on any image for a much larger version.

© 2015 Stephen J. Krieg

Sunset Rainbow At Natural Bridges

Rainbow and Bears Ears Buttes, Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah.

The weather forecast had been only 20 percent chance of showers. All day long we had sunshine and some dark clouds. Visitors arrived telling us they had come through intense rain, even hail, several miles back. We joked that they had been in the 20 percent spot. 

Then, in the evening, we got it. Rain, thunder. So peaceful to listen to the rain when you're inside and don't have to be anywhere right away. Stay dry and watch the land soak it up. 

Afterward, as sunset time was almost upon it, the rainbow appeared. Arcing across the eastern sky, with the blue-black rain clouds for a backdrop. And the Bears Ears Buttes up above us. The rainbow superimposed in front of them. 

© 2015 Stephen J. Krieg