Booking a Utah fall session: elevation is a calendar

Every year we get the same message in the second week of October. Is it too late for the color?

Sometimes yes. Usually no — you just have to drive to a different height.

That's the whole idea here, and once you have it, booking a fall session in Utah stops being a gamble. Elevation is a calendar. The same mountain has peak color three times, three weeks apart, at three different altitudes. If you know roughly when each band turns, you can pick a date months out and still be standing in gold.

Roughly when each band turns

These are approximate and they move a week either way with the weather. But the order never changes, and the order is the useful part.

So if your session is booked for 10 October and the high country has already blown through, you haven't missed it. You've just been handed a different location. We shoot the valley maples that week most years and they're extraordinary — a denser, warmer red than anything up the canyon.

Book the window, not the day

Here's what we'd actually suggest, and it's the thing that makes the difference:

Pick a two-week window rather than a date, and let us choose inside it.

Color depends on how cold the nights have been, how dry the summer was, and whether a windstorm has already stripped the trees. None of that is knowable in June. All of it is knowable four days out.

If you can give us a fortnight and a bit of flexibility on the exact evening, we will pick the night it actually looks good. If you need one fixed date, book the first week of October at mid elevation — it's the most reliable single bet in the state.

The things that go wrong

The pass closes. Guardsman Pass is a high mountain road and fall storms shut it, sometimes with no notice and sometimes in the first week of October, which is exactly peak. Check UDOT the morning of. Always have a lower alternative agreed in advance — we always do.

Everyone else had the same idea. UDOT puts out traffic warnings for the canyons during peak color and they are not being dramatic. A 5pm session up Big Cottonwood on the first Saturday of October means sitting in traffic instead of shooting. We go on weekdays where we can, and early.

One windy night. Aspens hold their leaves until suddenly they don't. A single hard wind can take a hillside down to bare sticks overnight. This is the main argument for the flexible window.

Dressing for the photograph instead of the mountain. It is a great deal colder up the canyon at seven in the evening than it was in the valley at noon — you gain the altitude and lose the sun at the same time. Bring the coat. Genuine shivering looks like genuine shivering.

What to wear, briefly

Fall here is already loud — yellow, orange, red, all at once. So:

• Go quieter than you think. Cream, oat, rust, deep green, denim, gray. The landscape is the color; you're the shape in it.
• Avoid bright yellow and bright orange, which vanish into the background.
• Texture beats pattern. Knit, wool, suede and corduroy all photograph well in this light. Small busy patterns don't.
• Layers you can take off give us three looks out of one outfit, which is the cheapest variety there is.

For seniors specifically: bring the thing you actually wear. The photographs people keep are nearly always the ones where someone looks like themselves.

The light, since that's the real reason

Fall light in Utah is low, long and warm by four in the afternoon, which means a session doesn't have to run to the edge of dark to get the good stuff. That matters if you're bringing children or a grandparent.

It also means backlight. Aspen leaves are thin, and when the sun is behind them they stop being yellow objects and start being lamps. That is the photograph everyone actually wants from a fall session and it only works for a short window each evening, pointing in one direction.

So if you come away with one thing: we are not choosing the time of day out of habit. We are chasing a specific effect that is only available for about forty minutes.

When to book

Fall fills first, every year. By the end of August the first two weekends of October are usually gone.

If you want one of them, the honest advice is to ask in July. If you're reading this in September, ask anyway — we keep some weekday evenings back, and weekdays are better up there regardless.

We photograph seniors, families and couples across northern Utah, and we're in Wisconsin too. If you want a session in the color this year, tell us what you're planning and we'll find the window.