THERE ARE a lot of things to love about Jason Hatfield’s photography. The textures. The color saturation. The composition. But in landscape photography, the real magic is often in capturing a spectacular scene at the right time with a wide depth of field—that is, having everything perfectly in focus. Hatfield’s 2013 “Wilkerson Pass Sunset,” a shot of yellow aspens in South Park, and his 2019 “Stony Storm Break,” an image of Colorado blue columbines set against the craggy San Juan Mountains, are exquisite examples. In both pictures, the viewer can see all the way to a crisp, clear horizon.
Hatfield, who resides in Montrose when he’s not traversing the West chasing the golden hour, grew up in Ohio, a place where he estimates he could peer only about three miles before something—a building, a forest—obstructed his sightline. Family road trips to Colorado, where he could take in views that unfurled for dozens of miles, were a revelation.
In 2008, the photographer and his wife moved from Ohio to the Centennial State, where depressing the shutter on the blown-open vistas that had so entranced him as a child became his full-time job. In recent years, though, Hatfield says one thing has made him question the long-term viability of his craft: hazy skies.
Smog and wildfire smoke have been so dense and omnipresent during the past few summers, in particular, that Hatfield hasn’t even bothered trying to shoot on many days. The 37-year-old lensman says he now spends almost as much time on his various meteorology apps, trying to predict where and when he’ll find the clearest conditions, as he does actually photographing. While Hatfield led a landscape photography workshop last summer, he says predawn smoke followed his attendees as they drove up Red Mountain Pass from Ouray like “fog flowing up a valley.” Hatfield switched to teaching the students how to nail close-up shots of wildflowers and waterfalls, but he knows that’s not what they were there for. “A lot of people come to Colorado for those grand scenes,” he says. “Haze turns them into gray, bland nothingness.”
That murky gloom obscuring the state’s postcard-worthy views is called regional haze. An atmospheric phenomenon in which pollution particulates scatter sunlight and reduce visibility, regional haze is a threat to Hatfield—and everyone else whose livelihood depends upon Colorado’s scenic grandeur. Consider the outdoor recreation industry, which accounted for $9.6 billion of Colorado’s gross domestic product in 2020. The Centennial State’s tourism juggernaut supports 150,000 jobs and expends considerable effort selling visitors on opportunities to play outside.
According to a 2020 report commissioned by the Colorado Tourism Office (CTO), 14 percent of overnight visitors to the state said the main purpose of their trip was to spend time outdoors. In 2019 (before pandemic-related interruptions), the tourism industry racked up $20.6 billion from nearly 87 million domestic and international travelers here to see, as a recent CTO marketing campaign suggests, the state’s “most spectacular vistas.”
Losing sight of beautiful scenery disrupts more than Coloradans’
