It's our secret . . . unlike the intense but relatively short fall color seasons of world-famous locations
like Colorado, New England or the Sierras, our autumn spans more than three months. The wide
variety of elevations, bio-zones, and deciduous trees in Arizona keeps photographers scurrying the
length and breadth of the state from late September to almost Christmas.
It's peaking now in the brilliant yellow & gold aspen stands of the White Mountains, Grand Canyon's North Rim, and Flagstaff's
San Francisco Peaks.
By mid-October, maples, gambol oaks, sycamores, alders and a host of vines, ferns and bushes
will produce an amazing array of colors in canyons and watersheds along the Mogollon Rim and
in sky island mountain ranges like the Galiuros, Huachucas, Chiracaquas, & Pinalenos.
This lasts into mid-November, when the last leg of the fall color trifecta begins in the lowest elevation watersheds in the
Grand Canyon, along Lake Powell, in the riparian zones of the rivers Verde, San Pedro, Salt & others,
the legendary paradisical blue-green waterfalls of the Havasupai Indian Reservation in the western Grand Canyon
and desert canyons like Arivaipa where the extraordinary yellows of massive cottonwood trees prevail.
Finally, into December, one finds the last vestiges of our almost endless autumn season in the nooks and crannies of desert mountain ranges like the Superstitions east of Phoenix.
They're all really beautiful. No. 2 is just hypnotic!
I also like a lot the last one. Strangely enough it also works very well if you crop away the upper part of the image and you're left just with the reflections and the waterfall.
jaggedhorizon wrote:
They're all really beautiful. No. 2 is just hypnotic!
I also like a lot the last one. Strangely enough it also works very well if you crop away the upper part of the image and you're left just with the reflections and the waterfall.
Wow - it may be a long leaf season but you sure are starting it off with a bang! The first image is wonderful for the intense yellows, and the 2nd is just a lovely composition. The 4th is great for me as well, and of course the closely shot waterfall image is amazing too. Inspirational stuff; I also will have to file away the info on fall colors for AZ for a hopeful future date to shoot there. Thanks for sharing these stunning images and your info as well!
Your photos opened my eyes to a completely new vision of my beloved home state. I grew up in Globe and then moved to North Carolina for graduate school. When I first experienced an autumn in the mountains of North Carolina, my sense was that Arizona has no such season. You have convinced me that I missed it all those years! Beautiful set! All are lovely, but my favorite is the second.
