Over the span of my photography career, I have always felt an incredible passion for capturing autumn. I love how the changing leaves make the world feel magical and I look forward to that every year. Autumn is a time of year that is full of wonderful memories for many, myself included. Making time to photograph this season is my way of honoring those memories while reflecting on them.

When I capture fall scenes, my goal is always to compose the frame in a way that best shows off the vibrant leaves! I enjoy working hard to create stunning autumn photos, oftentimes creating these images on long backpacking trips through the wilderness. This allows me to see remote locations in beautiful autumn colors. Often I am completely alone for miles and miles and it helps me to get in the right headspace for looking at nature as pure art in and of itself!

One of the biggest challenges I face photographing autumn color is staying warm! Like I mentioned, often I am backpacking to get my photos and this requires camping at high elevations during a time of year that is very cold! I’m often waking up to temperatures well below freezing, the days don’t warm beyond 45°f usually. One very special memory I have from an autumn backpacking trip was when I was capturing a beautiful sunrise at an alpine lake lined with autumn foliage when suddenly a mountain goat appeared! She did some posing by the lake while she grazed the flame orange grasses. It was truly a stunning moment.

To capture the quiet, inward qualities of autumn, I try to capture the feeling of nostalgia in many of my autumn photographs. To do this, I try to get myself into a headspace of memories and I think about feelings associated with those memories. Artists are oftentimes translators of ideas or concepts and I feel that my autumn photography is very much a translation of what many of us feel during autumn, captured in a single frame.