Steens Mountain Fall Color

Finally, 6+ months after my rotator cuff shoulder surgery, I am able to shoulder a heavy pack and resume photographic explorations ... just in time for my annual Fall visit to Steens Mountain to shoot its colorful foliage. My expectations are always low due to huge year-to-year variations in timing and quality of the color. And expectations were extremely low this year given our very hot and dry summer. But, once again, mother nature surprised me – this year's color was as good as my previous best visit in 2008! And the aspen color was uniformly good at all elevations, both in the groves at 7,500' and at the 6,000' gorge bottoms...I've never seen that. So, I was like a kid in a candy shop and came back with lots of good images.

The weather and lighting was amazing, going from heavy overcast to light overcast to filtered sunlight within a hour. As a result, the foliage color varied greatly, as you will see in the below images. I apologize in advance if you find some of the gallery's images a little repetitous – I found small framing, position and lighting changes produced interesting variants.

PS You may notice that some images are of Whorehouse Meadow - for those interested in how it was named, see this Wikipedia entry.

Panoramas – Tap/click on a pano's thumbnail to show an interactive, moving panorama; use the on-screen control bar or your finger/mouse to move around:

Fish Creek Sunset Color:

Kiger Gorge Fall Color:

Kiger Gorge Fall Color:

Little Blitzen Gorge Fall Color:

Image Gallery – Tap to view an individual image, then swipe to advance; use the top-right controls for auto play & other options (e.g, tap the curved arrow to open sharing options):