Looking Up, Telluride

Telluride, Colorado

This photograph was made in Telluride during autumn, looking straight up into an aspen grove. The original plan for the trip was to photograph fall color paired with fresh mountain snow, the combination Telluride is known for. That snow never came.

Rather than chase scenes that weren’t going to materialize, I shifted direction. I leaned into abstraction and proximity, letting the forest itself become the subject. Using an ultra-wide 10mm lens, I stepped beneath the aspens and worked vertically, allowing trunks, branches, and leaves to stretch outward and distort naturally toward the edges of the frame.

The result is less about place as a postcard and more about immersion. Standing there, the canopy felt endless. Gold leaves filtered the light, the sky turned deep blue above, and the world narrowed to what was directly overhead.

This image came from adapting to conditions instead of fighting them.

Context and Landscape

Telluride sits in a high alpine valley surrounded by steep peaks and dense mountain forests. Aspen groves dominate many of the lower and mid elevations, transforming dramatically each fall as their leaves turn bright yellow before dropping almost all at once.

Aspens grow in connected root systems, meaning entire groves are often genetically linked. What looks like many trees is often one organism expressing itself across a hillside. In autumn, those shared systems shift together, creating large, unified blocks of color.

Even without snow, the seasonal transition is abrupt and unmistakable. Light becomes sharper, air thins, and the forest floor fills quickly as the canopy gives way.

Creation Notes

This image was captured as a single exposure using a 10mm ultra-wide lens. The wide field of view exaggerates scale and curvature, allowing the trees to stretch and bend toward the edges of the frame.

The photograph was made in natural light with the sun positioned low enough to create a defined sun star through the leaves. No focus stacking or blending was used. The softness and distortion toward the edges are a natural result of the lens and angle, and were intentionally preserved.