San Francisco Peaks, Flagstaff, Arizona
Looking Up Into Gold
In the San Francisco Peaks above Flagstaff, a ring of white aspen trunks rising into a blue sky.
In an aspen grove in autumn, the most interesting view is directly overhead.
This frame looks straight up. White aspen trunks rise from every edge of the picture and converge toward the centre, like the spokes of a wheel. Their bark is pale cream and white, marked with dark knots and scars, and each trunk ends in a burst of golden-yellow leaves. Together, the leaves form a broken canopy around the edges of the frame, with deep blue sky showing through in the middle.
At the bottom, a dark green conifer pushes up into the frame, its needles almost black against the gold. It's the only thing in the picture that isn't yellow, white or blue, and it gives the composition an anchor. At the lower right, the sun breaks through the leaves as a small, sharp star.
Arizona doesn't get much credit for fall colour, but the high country around Flagstaff has aspen groves that turn bright gold in autumn. For someone who lives in Phoenix, these mountains are a different world: cool, green in summer, golden in fall, and within driving distance of the desert heat.
The key to this kind of photograph is symmetry, or at least the illusion of it. I found a spot where the trunks rose more or less evenly around me, so that they'd converge toward a single point in the sky. Then I pointed the camera straight up and adjusted until the gap of blue sky sat roughly in the centre, framed on every side by trunks and leaves.
Wide lenses exaggerate this effect. The trunks closest to the camera look enormous at the edges, while the treetops seem far away. It creates a sense of depth and height that you can feel standing there: the trees are tall, and you're small, looking up from the forest floor.
The colours are what they were: gold leaves, white bark, blue sky. It's one of those scenes that doesn't need much help.
From the bag
Sony A7R III · Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G · 20mm · 1/15s · f/18 · ISO 100
At 20mm, the widest end of the 20-70mm, the trunks converge dramatically toward the centre. f/18 does two jobs: it keeps everything from the nearest trunks to the farthest leaves in focus, and it turns the sun into a crisp sunstar as it peeks through the canopy. The trade-off was a slow 1/15s at ISO 100. At 20mm, that's manageable with a steady stance, and base ISO keeps the blue sky smooth and the white bark clean.