Colorado Fall Colors Photography: Recap of 2023 Bryan Maltais

View the complete gallery of 2023 Colorado fall colors photos here.

I spent fall colors 2023 in the San Juan Mountains bouncing around Telluride, Ouray, Ridgway and Silverton. My time was a combination of giving photo workshops and shooting on my own.

The 2023 fall colors season in Colorado was spectacular and long-lived because specific conditions aligned. Aspens in some parts of the state were fueled longer into the season by a cool and wet spring. For example, the Front Range received 20″ of precip by July, where the yearly average total is only 15″. However, the San Juan Mountains were still in drought, so this doesn’t explain their extended season.

Color vibrancy is also affected by the number of bright, sunny days with cool nights, but no frost. How does this work? By early Autumn, leaves stop producing green chlorophyll. Direct sunlight burns off the chlorophyll, exposing the yellow and orange carotenoid pigments that were always present beneath. Too many clouds makes for dull colors. Thick frost zaps the leaves before they peak. Heavy snow or strong winds tears them off too soon. Most of Colorado experienced sunny days without severe weather events, propelling good colors longer than average.

But you need much more than just peak colors to make “perfect” autumn landscape photos. While the aspen leaves may require sunny skies to mature, photos still need dramatic clouds for a balanced compositions. Chronic blue skies have dampened past seasons, but great clouds were present most days this year. Two early snows also frosted the mountain tops without downing the leaves at lower elevations. As a further bonus, the air was often placid, allowing for perfect reflections on water.

I mentally bookmarked this shot on Last Dollar Road near Telluride over a decade ago, but conditions never aligned when I was there to make a great shot. Sometimes you must revisit a spot repeatedly. When I saw that clouds were forecast the next morning at sunrise, I camped nearby and was in place well before dawn. Good clouds arise more often around late afternoon, but are less common for sunrise.

I shot the same location on Last Dollar road a few days later after a light snow. Now in the second week of October, this would finally herald the decline of fall colors.

The highlight of shooting fall colors for me was getting to work with all the great folks in my photography group and private workshops. Every individual was a pleasure to be around and added to the synergy of the group. I had students from California, Texas, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland.

This is a 5 photo panoramic image of the San Miguel Mountains near Telluride.

Sunlight is usually the antithesis of shooting waterfalls; you want even shadows without highlights to allow for a slow shutter speed that blurs the water. At first I raced to beat the sun that was creeping into both of these compositions. But once it shined into the frame, the interplay of sunlight and water proved spectacular.

Shooting the Milky Way along with fall colors was a novelty for me. In spring you can capture the Milky Way as a horizontal arc over the horizon, but by autumn it’s already vertical by nightfall. An advantage of the upright position is that you only need to capture the galactic core instead of the MW’s entire lenght. This allows using a stronger focal length, which helps maintain the size of foreground objects. It’s also convenient to shoot the Milky Way shortly after an early sunset for a good night’s rest. In spring and summer you have to keep strange hours for Milky Way photography. The Milky Way above Wilson Peak with a gold Aspen forest and split rail fence along a western ranch.

The Sneffels Range near Ridgway.

Wilson Peak on a crisp morning with no wind. The only challenge to capturing the reflection on this pond was the constant head wakes from surfacing trout.

A 5 photo panoramic composite of the Wilson group of the San Miguel Mountains.

Aspen forests are so versatile because they they provide subject matter from macro, wide angle, and telephoto photography.

Mt. Sneffles is the dominating feature of the skyline around Ridgway, Colorado and can be shot from many angles.

We drove through an unforecast blizzard in the dark to reach Crystal Lake near Ouray this morning, but we knew this was fantastic news. The storm disappeared in a flash, leaving behind exquisite scenery and a tranquil reflection on the water. Every now and then a cloudless sky works well to create a simple composition with strong impact.