Adirondack Autumn

Peak color in the Adirondacks lasts about a week, and the fog only shows up on a handful of those mornings. I was out before sunrise, watching the valley fill, and when the first light caught the ridge I got the drone up over the trees and stayed with it until the color and the fog were doing this together.

Everything I came for is in one frame. The hardwoods turned all at once, red and orange and gold running down the spine of the ridge, with the spruce holding their dark green in between. The fog moved through all of it like a slow river, low enough to sit on the treetops and thick enough to swallow the far hills.

I kept it high and looked straight down the ridge, so the color pulls you out toward the mountains and the sunrise behind them. The fog does the rest. It softens everything it crosses and gives the scene the kind of quiet you only get for about twenty minutes at that hour.

For anyone who gets up in the dark for one good morning of light. Printed and finished to gallery standard, made to bring a cold, bright autumn sunrise into a room. A piece of that morning to keep, long after the leaves are down.