It’s happening one again. The seasons of change are sweeping over Rocky Mountain National Park and our summer season is transitioning towards autumn. Whether it be the sounds of a bull elk bugle in a meadow or sets of aspen leaves turning golden yellow it’s becoming more apparent by the day that summer in Rocky Mountain National Park is nearing it’s conclusion.
For photographers this is both and exciting time of year as well as a hectic time of year. For many landscape photographers, fall is their favorite time of years. The changing seasons, the vibrant fall color, shorter and cooler days all tend to energize and inspire landscape photographers to get out and create images.
While this transition season is an exciting and inspiring time of year, it’s also hectic. Speaking for myself I find that I am both trying to extend the summer season and anticipate the coming fall season. Access to Rocky’s backcountry is still easy before snow and freezing temperatures set in allowing for me to continue to work on summer like images and access much of the park. At the same time I’m keeping an eye on the subtle and not so subtle changes associated with the onset of fall. It’s certainly great to have a lot of options at hand, but it creates stress in that decisions need to be made on what subjects to photograph.
One would think that having lots of options would be a good thing, and for the most part it is. What makes the decisions difficult is not having options, but trying to time and guess just how long one will have these options available. Timing is everything this time of year and one early season snowstorm or cold snap can quickly alter both your options and your plans.
A cold snap, wind storm, or snow can strip the leaves from the trees, cover the trails in snow and cause the surface of the lakes to freeze. In one fell swoop both your options to photograph summer like scenes as well as autumn scenes and fall color can vanish for the year. This urgency to beat out the unknown is what makes the transitional season from summer to autumn so tricky to time out and photograph.
Worrying aside, right now is about as good as it gets to photograph in Rocky Mountain National Park. Leaves are starting to change on aspen trees, streams are flowing freely and access to Rocky’s backcountry as well as Trail Ridge Road is unfettered. It’s time to take advantage of this great time of year and make the most of the photographic opportunities.
I’ll keep one eye to my cameras viewfinder and the other on the weather reports and fall color reports. As always it will be hectic, stressful, fun and a productive time to photograph in Rocky. But as they say in sports, it’s crunch time.
Wonderful fall color. Can’t believe it is going this fast.
Jao,
I agree. It seems everyear the seasons pass more quickly.