Colorado: Autumn, Close to Home
Written by Sarah Marino
I'm happy to be sharing a new portfolio of fall color photos from my home state of Colorado. You can view the full collection on our website in this gallery or you can download the photos as a PDF ebook portfolio here. You will also find a smaller selection of some favorites below.
I started processing these photos late last year and since then, I have decided to move toward tighter curation of my work. This means that I processed more than forty photos that I did not include in the final portfolio. I'll be back next week with a link to a hidden gallery where you can find these rejects, along with my reasons for deciding to exclude them. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this portfolio of work and, if you are in the northern hemisphere, the beginning of this year's autumn season.
For most of autumn 2025, we stayed close to home, spending our time in the national forests across southwestern Colorado. Here, aspens, willows, cottonwoods, oaks, and small birches blanket the mountainsides, fill the river valleys, and expand across the wetlands. The aspens are the main draw but, with time and familiarity, I have come to appreciate all the others just as much. Autumn is now less predictable across the American West. In 2025, that unpredictability worked in our favor. After a hot, dry summer, the aspens started changing very early. Then, heavy rains arrived in late August, helping extend autumn well beyond the normal week or two of nice fall colors.
With waves of visitors and teaching commitments, the extended season passed by in a flash. Even though it all accumulated into exhaustion, I felt grateful for all of the experiences --- time with friends and colleagues who live too far away, the smell of decaying aspen leaves, the erratic and dynamic mountain weather, and simply time with this landscape. These places are the reason we moved from an urban life to a much quieter (and typically slower) rural life. We wanted to live in close proximity to these rugged mountains with their forests and wildflowers, and nearly every day, we remark to each other that we are so incredibly fortunate to live where we do.
As always, it took me nearly a year to process these photos and as that time passed, many of them took on greater meaning, specifically as an archival record of a landscape that has been forever changed by wildfire. Starting in late June 2026, the nearly 40,000-acre Gold Mountain Fire quickly burned through some of the landscapes you will see represented here. Looking back now, I'm especially grateful that I made it a priority to spend extra time in the Cimarron Mountains last year. I have these photos to remember how it all used to be and why I loved it so much. It will become something new over time but, for now, I am still mourning this loss.
You can view the full collection of photos on our website in this gallery or you can download the photos as a PDF ebook portfolio here.
Aspen trees reflect on the surface of a puddle with a few fallen leaves floating by. San Juan Mountains, Colorado.
Aspen trees reflect on the surface of a puddle with a few fallen leaves floating by. San Juan Mountains, Colorado.
Late afternoon sun illuminates a row of autumnal aspen and cottonwood trees in the Cimarron Mountains of Colorado.
Morning sun shines through autumnal aspen leaves. Southwestern Colorado.
Late afternoon light streams through a ponderosa forest outside of Telluride, Colorado.
Fallen aspen leaves at rest on a spruce tree. Southwestern Colorado.
A hillside of autumnal aspens, with colorful willows below, in southwestern Colorado.
Autumn aspen and spruce trees growing together in a dense forest in Colorado's San Juan Mountains.
Sage, Gambel oaks, and junipers in autumn. Southwestern Colorado.
Late evening light shines through shafts of rain falling over the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado.
A grassy meadow transitions to willows and then spruce-fir forest near treeline in southwestern Colorado.
