Spring at Whiterock Mountain

Spring at Whiterock MountainSpring brings margarita colored aspen trees to the valleys below Whiterock Mountain near Crested Butte, Colorado.

Springtime high in the Colorado Rocky Mountains brings a season filled with contrasts. Our weather can be warm one day and snowing the next. Our mountains can be snow-covered one day and brown a few days later. Our trees undergo the same contrasts, bare one day and covered with margarita-colored tiny leaves just a few days later.

It's a joy to experience these contrasts since they welcome our short summers which we all look forward to after our long, white, winters. Since these contrasts seem to change on a daily basis trying to capture these fleeting moments requires artists to be on their toes. We must retrace our travels every few days searching for the peaks of great landscape views, light, and weather. Although many of our explorations are limited due to road closures, we must be diligent in our searches for new scenes and light.

"Spring at Whiterock Mountain" is a new image from this spring. The day started sunny but the sky quickly became threatening with dark clouds shadowing the landscape and a few spots of sunlight dotting the ground. Dang contrasts! I really liked the contrasts of the lime-green leaves against the dark rocks below one of the peaks of Whiterock Mountain. The aspen trees were in the deep shade of a dark cloud but seemed to glow. The mountain was in diffused sunlight with the bright sun illuminating the middle ground. This scene looked amazing to my naked eye which, attached to my brain, easily compensates for the contrast. The camera does not have that magical ability. It needs a little help. That help comes with the aid of a technique we call HDR photography. It involves making several photographs at different exposures and delicately smashing them together to get the best exposures from each part of the scene. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

This one worked for me. The scene grows on me every time I look at it. I hope it does the same for you.