Approaching Autumn

It’s almost here…and, being in Colorado during the peak of the fall colors, I’d ordinarily be tempted to post a few classic “golden aspen” shots.

But, let’s go with a few less traditional “scapes” instead.

A story to explain…

I was doing laundry some years ago in one of the hotels in Yellowstone National Park when I struck up a conversation with a fellow launderer. He happened to be a pro photographer from back east somewhere (or the mid-West?). He said he came out every year to Yellowstone, in the fall, specifically to make images of very intimate landscapes with the autumn color palette–that is, tufts of dying grass, collections of fallen leaves, twigs and small logs surrounded by those brilliantly-subtle autumn browns, yellows, and golds.

He was emphatic that his vision did not include the big, grand, classic landscapes of wild color, but rather the subtlety of the micro-worlds at our feet that most of don’t see because we don’t look down there.

In essence, he photographed what most of us ignore.

So, here are a few of my attempts to not ignore the subtleties that Mother Nature offers up as the high country transitions into hibernation. Finding compositions is a bit harder when going intimate and avoiding the grand and obvious.

Patterns in chaos?