i have a “real job” as an information technology worker at a fairly large company. occasionally, projects will arise that require my working after hours, or even on entire weekends. it seems these weekends of work typically coincide with the peak colors of aspen near me, as it did on this particular year. i went up the following weekend hoping to see brilliance, but saw instead a lot of leaves on the ground, and colors fairly uninteresting other than in spots.

as i was descending down towards my car without much in terms of photographic output that wasn’t merely experimental, i saw these reeds. the reflection of the grass, the reflecting pine trees to balance the obvious left-weightedness without the pine trees, the gradient of color from deep, dark blue to lighter blue all combined to intrigue me enough to make an image.

turns out i really liked the image. there’s a peace and quiet that resonates with how i often feel when i’m out in the wild on my own. hopefully you can sense and feel that as well.