Rouge

The harmony of nature in this scene simply blew my mind. Hiking through the aspen-covered forests of Utah was bloody hard work, but I knew there would be a reward at the end of my journey. For the first few days, bland sunny skies gave me a real challenge. With the hard, bright rays from above beating down on the white tree trunks below, this would be a total nightmare to expose. I just had to wait patiently. On day five, I hiked to this location in total darkness, with only a flashlight as my guide – I would need every second of daylight to capture this image. As the quiet dawn slowly eased into the forest, a cloak of mist descended in the background. This was the moment I had been waiting for. I set up my gear on an elevated part of the forest floor and shot off six frames, taking in the entire view – I couldn’t afford to miss a single inch of this vision. The total silence and smell of the forest put me in a moment of Zen that I will never forget.