The Forest's Embrace
Sometimes the most compelling scenes aren't the grand vistas. I found this little arrangement on the forest floor along Kebler Pass, and it just stopped me. What drew me in was the texture and the subtle light playing across the fern fronds, the way they perfectly framed this piece of fallen wood. It felt like a secret, a small, self-contained world hidden in the undergrowth. I spent a good while just looking at the intricate patterns and the soft gradations from light to shadow before I even took the picture. It’s a quiet image, but for me, it holds the whole feeling of being deep in that Crested Butte forest on a summer morning.
My truest pull has always been toward black-and-white imagery. The quiet tonal relationships in images like this speak to something in me that’s difficult to name. And yet, I continue to feel drawn back to color. I often find myself wondering why.
Maybe there’s a hesitation there, a reluctance to go deeper into what black and white reveals. It could be tied to the inner unrest that comes with lost childhood memories, the sense that if I look too closely, I might uncover something I’m not ready to face. And yet, that uncertainty is exactly what draws me forward. It makes me want to keep digging, to keep exploring, and to allow the work to become a path toward growth rather than avoidance.