It’s been a long-time goal of mine to hike and photograph a larch forest in the fall.   These amazing coniferous, evergreen trees grow high on the slopes of mountains.   Their baby-soft needles turn gold in autumn and provide a stunning display of fall alpine color.   I traveled to the Canadian Rockies in late September in order to hike the Larch Valley Trail, which has a large grove of larch trees in the Valley of the Ten Peaks high above Moraine Lake.  

The trailhead for the Larch Valley Trail is accessed from the Lakeshore Trail and is located a short distance past the Moraine Lake Lodge.   The first mile and half of the trail involves ascending the lower slopes of Mount Temple.  It is a moderately difficult, steep climb up many forested switchbacks.  We started our hike shortly after sunrise, with temperatures slightly above freezing, a completely overcast sky, and a light drizzle of rain in the air.  After an hour and half of hiking, we had gained approximately 1500 feet in elevation when the trail leveled off and the forest transitioned into a larch grove.  I was pleased that the rain had let up, and there was even an occasional patch of blue in the sky overhead.  

A bit of sunlight hitting the summit of Mount Temple as it towers over the larch forest.   Many of the larch trees were at the beginning of their color transition.  While many trees had turned bright yellow or gold, many others were still green.

As we were starting our hike through the larch forest, we ran into a young woman taking self-portraits for her social media accounts.   We asked if we could join in on the fun and take a few photos of her amongst the trees.   She had to be freezing cold in that red dress!

Soon the trail opened up into larger meadows surrounded by the rugged mountains of the Ten Peaks.    Small breaks in the clouds cast shadows on across the land and periodically illuminated trees.  I made a short time lapse video to capture the changing light.

As you continue up the trail, the valley expands into larger alpine meadows with smaller trees and a tundra-like ground cover, which also had turned several different shades of gold.  As we hiked the upper part of the valley, we were also blessed with some blue skies and dramatic clouds over Eiffel Peak and Pinnacle Mountain!

The quickly moving clouds provided some great conditions for another short time lapse video!  

I really enjoyed walking among the larch trees in the alpine meadows.  It was a fun challenge to line up a stand of golden larch trees, blue patches of sky, and the mountain peaks, all the while timing the shots to capture the sun lighting up the trees.   It was magical and it was everything I hoped it would be.

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It was another enjoyable sunflower season at Burnside Farms!  Beautiful glowing sunsets, red and pink twilight clouds, an expansive sky  of scattered golden clouds, and some really dramatic storm clouds.    Below are my favorite images for this year’s Summer of Sunflowers:

Tips for Sunflower Sunsets:

1.  Composition is important when selecting where to set up your tripod.   Pick a spot where the flowers are evenly spaced out in the frame across the foreground.   Flowers in the immediate foreground should be interesting and well formed.  Large gaps between flowers can be distracting to the flow of your scene.   Most sunflower heads should be facing the camera and not overly drooping.   However, having a few that are drooping in the frame can add some variety and interest to the image.
2. If you want to create an immersive view of a vast field of flowers, elevate your camera above the foreground to ensure you can see the receding rows of flowers leading all the way to the background.   
3. Focus stacking a series of images will ensure that all the flowers are sharp from front to back.  I usually take a series of three images:  one focused on the front flowers, one focused about a third of the way back in the flowers, and one focused on the background that is exposed for the lighting in the sky.  I manually blend these images as layers with masks into a single final image.
4. Whenever possible, capture the drama of sunset or twilight colors and lighting and their effects on the clouds in the sky.  
5. Setting an aperture to f16 or smaller when shooting the background will usually add some pleasing diffractive rays to the setting sun.

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