Share article:
Share article:

County Road 12 is a well graded gravel road that starts on Colorado Highway 133 near Paonia Reservoir. It ascends to an altitude of about 10,000 feet at the top of Kebler Pass, before eventually dropping back down to the town of Crested Butte. It is home to one of the largest living organisms on the planet,the Kebler Pass aspen grove.

This photo was taken from exactly the same location as the photo of the multicolored aspen on “The Dyke”. If you look down from this same location, rather than up, you can see into the aspen stands in many places. If you look through a 500mm lens, you get a for shortened view of the forest that looks very appealing. If you work at it, you can get a photo similar to the one seen above. When I look at it, I keep waiting for the Leprechaun to appear with his pot of gold.

The best color for this location normally occurs in the last week of September.

Late afternoon on a day with partly cloudy skies. The shot above was taken with the equivalent of a 500mm focal length lens on a 35mm full frame camera.

LENS: 300-600mm on a full frame camera, 200-500mm on a crop sensor camera

FILTER: none needed

 

Enchanted Forest

Waiting for the Leprechaun
©Miles Hecker

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE TO SEE GOOGLE MAP LOCATION

SEASONS

TIMES

LENS & FILTERS

FILMS

Slide films: Fuji Velvia 100

 

Read this story and all the best stories on The Luminous Landscape

The author has made this story available to Luminous Landscape members only. Upgrade to get instant access to this story and other benefits available only to members.

Why choose us?

Luminous-Landscape is a membership site. Our website contains over 5300 articles on almost every topic, camera, lens and printer you can imagine. Our membership model is simple, just $2 a month ($24.00 USD a year). This $24 gains you access to a wealth of information including all our past and future video tutorials on such topics as Lightroom, Capture One, Printing, file management and dozens of interviews and travel videos.

  • New Articles every few days
  • All original content found nowhere else on the web
  • No Pop Up Google Sense ads – Our advertisers are photo related
  • Download/stream video to any device
  • NEW videos monthly
  • Top well-known photographer contributors
  • Posts from industry leaders
  • Speciality Photography Workshops
  • Mobile device scalable
  • Exclusive video interviews
  • Special vendor offers for members
  • Hands On Product reviews
  • FREE – User Forum. One of the most read user forums on the internet
  • Access to our community Buy and Sell pages; for members only.
Share article:

You may also like

image
Community

Paris Photo 2025: Where Photography's Past, Present, and Future Converge

What happens when 80,000 photographers, collectors, curators, and artists gather under one glass roof in Paris?
Jon Swindall

Jon Swindall

·

November 11, 2025

·

10 minutes read


canon r III and rf mm
Camera & Technology

Canon's R6 Mark III and RF 45mm f/1.2: Why Balance Beats Extremes

Canon's latest releases prove that thoughtful engineering at 32.5MP and affordable f/1.2 glass matter more than winning specification wars.
Jon Swindall

Jon Swindall

·

November 7, 2025

·

11 minutes read