After a few stops along the highway, we reached Ouray, Colorado. We ate lunch in a park and then went hiking. It was a light hike without much exertion but full of scenic vistas, which sounds perfect for a photographer.

I was busy following the narrow but clear trail when I happened to look back and was floored by the landscape. Unlike the wide-open vistas near Mountain Village, we were in a partially wooded area. The trees were different, too, with evergreen pines replacing the fall-colored yellow variety. I busted out the Fujifilm GFX 50R and captured this scene with the 40mm equivalent.

I can’t explain why, but this photograph has a painterly quality. I did no special processing and didn’t add an effect to replicate a painting. Uncommonly, I shot at f22 to capture as much detail from front to back as possible. Extremely small apertures like this often reduce image quality through diffraction. This picture looks adequately sharp but perhaps just soft enough to take the edge out of the image. Could that explain the difference in its look?

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