Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Relentlessly searching for autumn color

The view from the bridge
London, ON
October 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram


It’s been a lousy autumn for color, with leaves that have been slow to change, often dropping right from the trees after turning a dreary shade of brown.

Part of me wanted to jump in the car and drive far away, as I’d heard other folks were having more luck further afield. But my eco-conscious conscience got the best of me and I stuck closer to home.

I kept walking over to the nearby woods, revisiting nooks and crannies in the canopy with the faintest hope that they might have something new to share, perhaps a little extra light or color.

It felt like an ongoing mission to find something that seemingly didn’t want to be found, to tease out some brightness from a landscape that had no intention of cooperating.

And as much as I whined about it every time I returned home with bupkis, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. There was something about digging through the murk that made this year’s autumn color search the most enjoyable one I’ve had in a while.

Photography, after all, is never so much about the stories that present themselves to us, without effort. Rather, it’s become about the process of uncovering the hidden, of searching for the invisible, of finding and capturing the unexpected. It’s the search, then, that’s the thing.

In the end I found some color - in places I’ve never looked before. But what sticks with me most isn’t the photos I brought home, but the stories I managed to tell as I stumbled through the woods looking for inspiration.

Photography. Life. Kinda the same thing, I think.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #medway #valley #heritage #forest #tree #trees #red #leaves #texture #thames #river #nature #naturephotography #landscape #landscapephotography #photography #nikon #nikonphotography #nikon_photography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded

Related:
Canopy in chaos, October 2023
A tale of two trees, October 2022

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