11 Photographs That Highlight the Beauty of Summer

The Strawberry Moon, the first full moon of summer, also featured a lunar eclipse. Allison shot the photo in Vail, Colorado, using her 600mm lens. “I didn’t have to do much to it,” she reflects, “but added a little bit of color.”

This zoomed-in image of a dandelion seed features a vibrant, pink background that nearly disguises the plant's true identity. “I love dandelions,” the artist discloses. “Sometimes, I get so immersed that I lose myself looking through the macro lens. I can believe what I see. It’s amazing, the details.”

Summer flowers delight not only humans with an eye for color, but also bees with a taste for pollen. “I see bees all the time in my backyard,” says Allison, “but when you get close with a macro lens, you really see the detail in the wings and the pollen.”

The reflection of light off bodies of water has become a motif in the photographer’s body of work. In this case, light sparkles on the surface of Sloan’s Lake in Denver. “It’s mesmerizing and hard to capture,” she says. “When you really look at it, you almost fall into a trance. It’s a matter of being at the right spot when sunset hits.”

This unicorn on a carousel at Lakeside Amusement Park in Lakewood, Colorado, typifies the sense of fantasy Allison’s images often evoke. “The sunlight was hitting this just right,” she explains. “This did not need a lot of reworking.”

Allison captured the full spectrum of this vivid rainbow from her front porch using a 300mm zoom lens. “The camera doesn’t capture what I see. The camera can flatten out the color so I color correct to bring back what I see, which seems more brilliant.”

America’s Independence Day sky marks the unofficial middle of summer. “I was fortunate enough to be on the rooftop of The Source Hotel for somebody’s birthday and saw the fireworks show after a Colorado Rockies baseball game,” she explains. “This one has a lot of post-production because fireworks out of a camera don’t look as magical.”

The devastating summer wildfires in the Western United States can make for terribly beautiful sunrises and sunsets. The increased frequency of such fires, due to climate change, often results in smokey skies which can boost the color vibrancy of a setting sun. The neon red of one such sunset can be seen here, playing across a body of water.

A ladybug ready for its close-up surprised the artist when she spotted it through her camera lens. Its shell appears to hold a sheen reminiscent of Chinese lacquer.

Through Allison’s macro lens, familiar fruits of summer— a lemon and a raspberry— take on abstract appeal. “This was staged like a still life. There’s no auto-focus on that macro lens, so I move in and out a lot. There’s a lot of physicality to getting a macro shot finally dialed in. I don’t like to use a tripod. I use my body and my instinct.”

Allison photographs clouds, one of her favorite subject matters, both in color and black and white. “It’s ever-changing, the feel and mood of our skies,” she says. “In Colorado, there’s something about being a mile high. Up in the ozone layer, the light is different.”

Diane Allison, pictured with her large prints on paper, part of Crush Walls in the RiNo Arts District of Denver.