It is always kind of funny, as summer gives the way to autumn, you can tell very easily who is nature photographer and who is not. See a smile on his face? Chances are he is photographer…As autumn approaches, nice things happen around us which will affect very much the evocative power of nature photography. Light gets a different quality, colours start to appear in the trees and grasses, mists begin to inundate the valleys, first snow falls in the mountains, frost makes its come back, sunrises and sunsets tend to happen at more civilized hours, crowds out there become rare and the air gets filled with a delightful scent of moist and freshness. These days, Nature is putting the low gear, preparing itself for pulling up in the winter months parking lot…a time of transition, loaded with mood and character.
As “dreadful” as summer might sound, summer is (amongst other things) the season for great photography up there in the mountains. So I thought I might say goodbye to summer with a shot which reflects the very alpine summer spirit. In summer, over-the-timberline areas show themselves as a land of rocks, lichens and grass, great empty skies where the twilight colours create a magical atmosphere, and the everlasting (?) presence of the glacial ice in the summits. These are days when photography finishes even before most of the people start to stirr in their sleeping bags, when magic happens as the earth’s shadow and pastel colours inundate the sky and the still absent thermic winds allow water to become a perfect mirror. A few minutes later and the contrasty light turns the image into a documentary shot of a mountain range reflected in a lake…reminding us we’d better forget we are photographing subjects, but the light reflected by subjects. That again is the magic of photography.
Great autumn light to you all ;-)
Warning: iconic image of an iconic place…but hey, I could not avoid it!
(click on the image to see it bigger!)
panoramic 617 format, schneider super angulon 90 XL, Fuji Velvia 50 slide film
Rafael Rojas secondary blog 
Beautiful words and an image to match.. great work mate… I’ll see you there…