Salida photographer Don Page captured a deer foraging at the Everett Ranch along Chaffee County Road 166

Don Page – his parents named him Don, not Donald – began photography 45 years ago back in Illinois, first with a Kodak Instamatic, then with 35mm film camera in 1978. A self-taught photographer, Page turned his lens toward West Virgina barns around 1990. He switched to digital in 2007, and moved to Salida in 2012.

A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Page wouldn’t give up photographing the Rafter 26 Ranch barn near Buena Vista, along Colorado Road 339.

In February 2017, on a cold morning, Page knew that he had the shot he wanted, one that wouldn’t get any better. “My ambition makes me work harder, working for the perfect time where everything works,” Page said. “A good photograph is like fine art. You’ll never repeat that image again, and its impact – that image will have its own little way of lasting a long time.”

There’s a reason Page isn’t the only Colorado photographer who makes a point of creating the perfect barn photo, he said. “Barns stands out - the size of them, usually in bright colors. They just seem to be part of a heritage we’ve had in the agrarian years.”

Page worked for years in the Illinois Department of Transportation’s research and department laboratory. He learned a lot on the job about new road materials, just as he has continued learning about photography. “I was amazed how much a camera revealed, the things I hadn’t seen. It’s always a surprise, delightful.”

Andrew Carafelli is a Denver lawyer and avid hiker. He’s hiked every Colorado 14er once, and half of them again with his son, Clint. Clint is halfway through hiking half of Colorado’s 600-plus 13ers. Andrew, 65, isn’t joining him on those hikes.

Carafelli is also a hobbyist photographer. Like Page of Salida, he’s a perfectionist, with an artistic eye. That eye can’t give up on the perfect shot of a barn near Telluride, with the Coors mountain, Wilson Peak, in the background.

Built in the early 1900s, Hogg Ranch dairy barn endures rough weather beneath Wilson Peak,
elevation 14,023 feet, in the San Juan Mountain Range near Telluride.
The ranch is named for an attorney who helped establish Mesa Verde National Park.
Andrew Carafelli

“You have two different icons coming together, a famous barn and the Wilson Peak, the summit with a point on it, the barn with a point on it,” Carafelli said. “They go together so well. My father was a fine artist. He always loved painting old barns, so I got from him a love of old barns and old buildings. They have a sense of history, stories they could tell.”

Steve Hixon of Colorado Springs receives inspiration for barn photography from his wife, Darlene. “She wanted me to get a red barn in the snow a couple of years ago,” a barn near Palmer Lake off Colorado Highway 105, Hixon said.

“Barnes are pastoral, idyllic, simple, not cluttered, and in winter, the colors are so stark,” Hixon said. He leads photography classes. “I tell people to simplify their photos.”

A former pastor, Hixon doesn’t always hike deep into the mountains for his photographs. For the red barn photo, he drove a front-wheel drive Mazda CX-5, which got him to the fence line of a ranch property. That’s all he needed – that, and good weather: just enough snow, but not too much.

Hixon began photographing after experiencing an epiphany at a New Year’s Eve dinner in 2002.

“I don’t know why I said it, but I said I think I will try to show and sell some of my photos,” Hixon said. “That launched me into this journey of how to get good pictures. I think I had a good eye, and I developed an obsession for learning photography.”

What he and Darlene describe as his “accidental retirement” is now a pastime of photography for calendars and displays of his photos on the walls of Pikes Perk, a coffee shop in Colorado Springs.

Allan Ivy is a lifelong photographer from South Africa who toured American ranches in 1985 and moved to the Gunnison area, where he opened a gallery that COVID closed.

Ivy’s favorite barn shot is Therese Ritz’s horse barn along Tomichi Creek, taken in 2015. “I go past it every day, admire it, as I go into town on County Road 38. I photograph it from the road.”

Winter light is best in Gunnison, Ivy said, “because it’s so cold, you’ve got hoarfrost. It’s sparkling in the sky, and when you’re lucky, it gives you early morning glow.”

Barn photographers can’t help but glow with delight when they look through their lenses and see their winter wonderland.


Steamboat Ski Resort – lit here for lovers on Valentine’s Day.
Corey Kopischke