Meadow Creek Trail for Autumn Color

From a few days ago…

Try this one out for some fall foliage festivities: the Meadow Creek Trail, right off of I-70 near the town of Frisco, Colorado (Exit 203). A 2.6 mile round-trip medium-steep hike will take you up to Lily Pad Lake and back, through a wonderful aspen colony. As you climb up the slope, you’ll also get some nice views of Dillon Reservoir and Peak 1/Tenmile Peak, as well as other surrounding high peaks.

Here you have the classic, somewhat cliché, “looking up” shot with the somewhat classic and cliché sunstar effect (f/16) using a super-wide angle lens (14mm). The challenge, these autumn days, is how to find a perspective that hasn’t already been photographed a million times before by Aunt Betty, Uncle Bob, and your grandmother:

Looking Up. Meadow Creek Trail, Frisco, Colorado, 2016

Or, maybe swap out to the telephoto lens and try a vertical shot, framing some particularly colorful aspen between the shadowed trunks of their stout and vigorous neighbors:

Vertical Color. Meadow Creek Trail, Frisco, Colorado, 2016

The only aspen here are well into the background. This image is really all about lines…with a sunstar as a focal point:

Lines in the Forest. Meadow Creek Trail, Frisco, Colorado, 2016

The bridge over the creek is a nice slim-shady spot to practice your slow shutter water photography:

Autumn Creek. Meadow Creek Trail, Frisco, Colorado, 2016

One of the viewpoints along the trail, with 12,805-foot Peak 1 (the mountain that sits right behind Frisco) above:

Tenmile Peak, Autumn. Meadow Creek Trail, Frisco, Colorado, 2016

My interest, though, is in the challenge of discovering more subtle compositions. A photograph like this may not have the same “instant gratification score” for the average viewer, but I prefer a bit of understated complexity when it comes to autumn landscapes…struggling to avoid the cliché along the way:

Aspen Grove, #2. Meadow Creek Trail, Frisco, Colorado, 2016