Summer Wildflowers (and More) in Crested Butte, Colorado
Written by Sarah Marino
In July, we visited Crested Butte, Colorado so I could teach two photography workshops as part of the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival. Below, you will find a few favorite photos from mostly before and after the workshops. If you would like to join me in exploring Crested Butte, one of the best places in North America for summer wildflowers, I will be returning as an instructor for the 2026 festival. From July 9 to 12, I will be teaching a workshop with six extended field sessions and three classroom sessions. We will be focusing on the types of quieter landscapes featured below, including intimate landscapes, portraits of plants, and abstract subjects.
One of my main goals for the workshop will be helping each participant develop a cohesive portfolio to represent their time in Crested Butte. In addition to my usual instruction on working with all different kinds of light, developing stronger compositions, seeing more deeply, and approaching the landscape with an open mind, I will also be providing guidance on thinking in terms of projects, developing cohesive bodies of work, curating your work for presentation, and sequencing photos for greater visual impact. If you would like to join me, you can learn more about the workshop in this PDF document and you can register here. This is the only in-person workshop I will be teaching during 2026.
TURNING ATTENTION TO WHAT IS RESONATING MOST
Now, I'll turn to sharing a few notes about the photos below. During any photo trip, I try to pay attention to the ideas and points of connection that continue to bubble up as I spend time in the landscape, and then I work on developing a portfolio around those ideas. I pair this with the practice of minimizing expectations so I can direct my attention to the ideas that are resonating most at the time of my visit. Had the weather and flower conditions been more conducive to photographing grand landscapes, I might have been called in that direction. However, during my time in Crested Butte, the feeling of being intimately surrounded by fields of wildflowers is the main theme I returned to on all of my outings before and after the workshop, with a few birds, river scenes, and close-up plant photos mixed in for variety.
This means that for my photographs of flowers, I turned most often to tighter intimate landscape compositions. This approach to composition helps suggest the feeling of being surrounded or enveloped, with the flowers spilling over the edges of the frame. When shared as a portfolio, I hope this composition approach repeated across multiple photos helps further amplify this visual message that continually resonated with me while I was in the field.
REVISITING A FIRST STEP
Many years ago, I photographed my first sunset at a lake near Crested Butte. I wish I had saved the photo so I could share it here. Since I cannot find it, you will have to trust my assessment that it was terrible. I used the pop-up flash on my camera to illuminate the foreground. The horizon was badly tilted. The flowers in the foreground--magenta fireweed and some early-blooming purple asters--were unevenly distributed and clumped in a way that made the composition feel aggressively unbalanced, and I placed the mountains in the background in a awkward, unattractive place within the frame. And the depth of field... I am not sure if anything in the scene was actually in focus. A poor rendition of a lovely scene!
The most important thing: I had a great time that evening and remember the feeling of wanting more. Years later, I am still as enthusiastic about photography as I was as a true beginner. With the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival, I had the opportunity to revisit and more deeply consider my connection to this landscape, including this first formative experience as a landscape photographer. It was exciting to see how much progress I have made during the intervening years and to come full circle with teaching at this highly regarded event. I hope you will consider joining me in this special place next summer.
You can view some of my favorite photos from our time in Crested Butte below and you can view the full collection from this trip here.
A cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum) stands above larkspur and corn lilies below. Crested Butte, Colorado.
A field of summer wildflowers. Crested Butte, Colorado.
Corn lilies (Veratrum californicum) fade from their summer greens to autumnal yellows and browns. Crested Butte, Colorado.
Dew drops cover translucent summer grasses. Crested Butte, Colorado.
A pretty clover plant growing in a wildflower meadow. Crested Butte, Colorado.
A pretty young raspberry leaf with soft purple edges. Crested Butte, Colorado.
White osha wildflowers (Ligusticum porteri) grow among aspen trees in the summer. Crested Butte, Colorado.
A hummingbird right before takeoff. Crested Butte, Colorado.
A patch of lupine fades into a forest of old aspen trees. Crested Butte, Colorado.
An expansive patch of bracken ferns growing in an aspen forest in Crested Butte, Colorado.
Tree shadows create a mix of light and dark on this patch of grasses. Crested Butte, Colorado.
A beautiful patch of subalpine fir trees growing near Crested Butte, Colorado.
Gentle cascades flow over colorful rocks in the Slate River. Crested Butte, Colorado.
A quiet morning at a pretty beaver pond in the mountains outside of Crested Butte, Colorado.
Strong sunlight creates refraction patterns on the surface of the Slate River near Crested Butte, Colorado.
