I had signed up for a wildlife shoot that took me on a road trip to the eastern edge of Gallatin County, Montana, along Brackett Creek Road to approximately Forest Service Road 974. While the wildlife shoot proved less than successful, the trip to Bozeman, the Gallatin and back through Madison County to the Big Hole, Montana, proved to be quite productive and made up for the shortcomings of my wildlife shoot.

On returning to Bozeman this mid-October evening, I spied a nice, weathered red Dutch barn with a rounded top. Behind it was a field of cottonwood trees more orange than yellow in the evening light since the sun had been down about ½ an hour. Also behind the barn was an almost full moon rising from the south. Being a fan of old barns and believing it to be part of my responsibility to record the existence of these old relics, which are rapidly disappearing, I took several images of the barn.

As I finished and got ready to head out, I saw this wonderful dirt road winding its way into the hills framed by the muted colors of the various Douglas Hawthorn, Water Birch, and Rocky Mountain Maple trees with the Cottonwoods in the background. But what I liked best was the little splash of red from the Trilobe Sumac in the foreground to balance the dark blue of the evening sky.

I subscribe to a Plein Air artist daily newsletter and find many of their comments relevant to photography and the planning of pictures. Recently, they talked about using bright or "high chroma" colors where a spot of red stands out louder than when used in abundance. Here, the use of high-key colors of red and orange is balanced against the low-key blue of the evening sky. The little sumac is the portal to the Middle Skunk Creek Road into a Montana Autumn evening.