A while back I wrote about searching for fall colors in California. We decided to return to Lundy Canyon on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The star of the show are the aspens. They grow in bunches along the sides of the creeks and the color explosion happens seemingly all at once. The contrast of their yellow against the granite of the mountains makes for good pictures. Been there done that, I thought my fall color chasing was over.

Recently, I went to Zion National Park in southern Utah. The stars of the fall color show along the Virgin River are the cottonwoods. Like the aspens in California, they turn bright yellow and slightly orangeish. Unlike the aspens, they don’t grow in groups or chains of trees. Instead they ten to be solitary, not unlike California oak trees. Sometimes they are standing like a sentinal guarding the pathway, other times they are bunched together, being both separate and together at the same time (a little like teenagers.)

The cottonwoods contrast against the red sandstone walls of the ancient and eroding rock faces to make a warm and contrasty color photograph. It sets up a colorful Kodak moment (if you’re old enough to remember the marketing slogan. If you remember that you also remember Paul Simon’s song, Kodachrome, his ode to the cool saturated colors of the slide film.) The contrast between the cottonwoods and the red walls of the Virgin River also works well with a red filter when shooting black and white, dulling the red sandstone while highlighting the yellow and doing nice contrasty things to the sky.

In my last post I mentioned how the visit started out with cloudy, rainy skies. The bright yellow of the cottonwoods stood out against an otherwise overcast and flat landscape. The cottonwoods not only created a focal point for some of the photos, they also helped create depth of field, something usually done with light and shadow.

Even though I went searching for fall colors along the eastern Sierra range, I guess it is fair to say this year’s fall color show happened in Zion National Park along the Virgin river. The cottonwoods were a pleasant surprize and since they were new to me, it made for a unique photography session.

If you have a friend from the east who insists the only fall color is in Vermont and New Hampshire, point them to the great spaces of the west in Zion National Park.

I’m parking photos from by trip to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks in this gallery: https://www.davewaltersphoto.com/Landscapes/Zion-and-Bryce-Canyon-National-Parks. If you’re interested in something to put on your wall, drop me an email or comment on the blog page.

Photo tips: I always travel with a tripod. I reject the advise by some that says with the higher iso abilities of modern cameras every picture can be taken hand-held. There are several reasons I reject this advise. Here is one, the process of making silky, moving water within the frame is only possible with a long exposure. A hand-held photo will freeze water, not make the silky image I sometimes am aiming for. The same applies if you want to give clouds the illusion of moving across the scene. Long exposures require a tripod. Here’s another, I like to shoot film, and seldom shoot higher than iso 400. The tripod is a photo saver when the light is anything less than ideal.

I have several different tripods, a couple for studio work, one that is carbon fiber, and one I bought specifically for hiking and motorcycling. The smaller of the units has a low weight limit and if I take it with my Mamiya 645 (as I did in Zion) it can be insufficient.

Depending on my point of view, my tripod might not get low enough. So I travel with a sandwitch bag of rice. The bag is maleable and can conform to the surface of a rock while still providing a flat, level  surface to set the camera on. As an added bonus if I forget it on the rock I’m not out an expensive piece of equipment and have done little environmental damage.