I was born and raised in Utah, at the foot of the Wasatch mountains (a piece of the Rockies). As such, a big part of my childhood was running around in the canyons, valleys, meadows, and woods the Wasatch range offers.

One of my favorite things about the mountains is that once you get above a certain elevation, you see huge groves of aspen trees. They’re beautiful all year round, but there’s something transcendent about them in the fall, when their golden leaves form a canopy that feels like it belongs to a different universe.

My photographer dad and I usually take at least one early morning photo trip every fall around the Alpine Loop, which is a scenic drive that meanders through a couple of canyons close to Mt. Timpanogos. In fall 2019, we took just such a drive right after I had gotten a new telephoto lens, and I was itching to try it out.

Near the highest elevation point of the Alpine Loop is an area called Aspen Grove. In the fall, its breathtaking beauty more than makes up for its unimaginative name. If you get up early enough, you can catch sunrise light filtering through the leaves, and also beat most of the “family outing” traffic the area attracts during the day.

As we drove and talked, I had my eyes peeled for the right aspens. I was picturing a scene where their stately pale trunks were growing straight and evenly spaced, and I could feature one of them in the foreground with a pattern of them fading slowly out of focus as they grew further back. I also knew I wanted to be pointed toward the sun to get backlit leaves, and I wanted it to be somewhere the foliage was dense enough to make a solid gold background without any visible sky or ground. The picture in my head was white on gold, with very little giving a grounded sense of location or space, and an otherwordly backlit glow. What I visualized was really effectively conveying the sense of serenity I get when I find myself in these mountain places.

I wasn’t seeing anything that looked just right from the road, so we pulled over, and I resumed my search on foot. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. I tried a few different angles and tested out the full focal range of my new lens to find the best fit for my composition. It turned out to be fully zoomed in at 210mm. Once I settled on an angle and composition for the photo, I set up my tripod, dialed in my focus and other settings, and took the shot. Satisfied I had gotten what I wanted, I headed back to the car.

I had some work to do in Lightroom. My white balance looked cooler and greener than the impression I had of the scene, so I warmed it up somewhat and shifted the green more towards yellow. I recovered highlight detail where I thought it was needed, and lifted the shadows. This photo didn’t call for a huge contrast range or a lot of deep dark areas to anchor it—I specifically didn’t want the viewer to feel grounded or anchored, so I let the photo exist as mostly midtones and highlights. I did a little dodging to help even out the tones in the center trunk— wanted it to look uniformly light. I added a very subtle vignette to help draw the viewer’s eyes towards the center just a bit. Finally I did a little sharpening like I do on basically all of my photos. It was pretty close to exactly what I was envisioning while we drove down the mountain road. It looked like you could walk up to that trunk, and past it, and keep walking forever without ever running out of soft aspens and glowing golden light. Besides that, I couldn’t be more pleased with the lens on its maiden voyage. Fully racked out and wide open it was delivering great results.