First Snow On Kebler Pass

First Snow PanoramaThe first snow of the season leaves yellow aspen leaves the only color in the grove.

Today is this kind of day. Grey skies with light snow falling on what remains of our colorful aspen forests signal a change of seasons. 

While changing seasons can bring on feelings of melancholy, they can also bring excitement. Watching the landscape change from an extraordinarily colorful palette to a monochrome view causes a shift in my perspective. How I view the world around me changes from chasing splashes of color to finding compositions in shapes, shadows, and a sculpted landscape. 

This grove of aspen trees is always one of the last to shed its leaves. I'm not sure why, but I have more than a few versions of this scene captured over the years. I like the panorama format for this scene because it helps remove a lot of dreary sky and brown foreground while focusing on the golden subjects.

This scene was captured on film with a Hasselblad XPan panorama camera and its 90mm lens. Today I would use my Nikon D850 with its trusty 24-120mm lens, capturing 7 or 8 overlapping frames and then stitching them together in Adobe Camera Raw software. While the technology and equipment have changed over time, the vision and message of the image remain the same. I can't remember ever selling this photograph. I believe the only copy is hanging in my hallway. I hope you enjoy "First Snow on Kebler Pass". It won't be long before all the colors will be gone!