For more than 35 years, Steven and Sylvia Oboler have returned to the overlook above Horse Ranch Park along Kebler Pass, watching the same mountainside change with the season. Some years the aspens lean mostly gold. In others, more green hangs on. Almost always, a streak of red runs through the slope.

“We have learned to have no expectations at Kebler – or, for that matter, almost anyplace we wander to photograph,” Sylvia said. “It is what it is, and at our age, we enjoy it all – just being there, together.”

On Oct. 3, 2025, the couple was driving from Paonia to Crested Butte for dinner when they made their usual stop at Horse Ranch Park. The weather did not look promising. Clouds flattened the view of Purple Mountain and Dike, and rain moved in and out across the pass.

Still, they stayed.

For more than two hours, they worked through changing conditions – brief sun, dappled light, steady rain and darkening storm clouds. When the rain intensified, they headed back to the car and packed away their tripods and Nikon D850s.

Then, before leaving, they looked back once more.

Through branches and seed pods beside the car, they saw a distant stand of red aspens brighten against the stormy mountainside. With their camera gear stowed, they grabbed their Google Pixel 8 phones and began composing the scene through the foreground tangle, adjusting the exposure as oversized raindrops fell around them.

That final image won Colorado Life’s Colorado Nature award in the 2025 Share the View International Nature Photography Contest.

Instead of opening onto a wide, unobstructed landscape, the photograph asks the viewer to look through the branches to the color beyond. The layered composition turned a familiar Kebler Pass view into something more intimate and unexpected.

The Obolers never made it to their dinner reservation.

This photo was shot with a Google Pixel 8 Pro at 18mm at f/2.8 for 1/440 sec, ISO 16.