Telluride

Look along the hillside and you can see the trees turning in patches, one group fully gold while the group beside it is still green. That is because a stand of aspens is usually one organism, hundreds of trunks sharing a single root system, each grove keeping its own schedule.
This is the road out of Telluride in the last week of September. The pavement dips, climbs, and bends away into the trees, and above it the mountain sits in cold shadow while everything down at road level is still catching light. Orange on one side, yellow on the other, and a thin dotted line running up the middle of all of it.
I shot it long and stood dead center on that line, because the whole frame lives or dies on symmetry. A foot off to either side and the road stops pulling you forward and starts looking like a snapshot taken through a car window. Everything here hangs off the centerline.
For anyone who plans a week in September around a color forecast. Printed and finished to gallery standard, made to bring cold mountain air and warm color into the same room. A piece of Colorado to keep, from the week the whole hillside agrees.