This is my last week in autumn, as we are leaving soon for the southern hemisphere where we will be landing in the middle, or maybe closer to the beginning stages of summer. It will be quite a change, getting used to the heat again, after slowly moving into winter. Although, lately it’s been getting cold, wet and miserable pretty fast. One day it was summer and lovely warm weather and the next it was dark by 5 and rainy, muddy and cold. Autumn certainly throws some arbitrary weather at us, doesn’t it?

But, and this has to be said, autumn is certainly one of the loveliest, most photogenic seasons. I know I’ve said it before, but no other season inspires me as much as autumn to go out and take photos, to revel in the beauty of a leaf or to crawl on hands and knees to get that shot of a tiny mushroom. Sometimes I feel quite self-conscious when I’ve been on a photo-walk or morning run where I’ve taken my camera along, when I return with stains on my pants and my hair all over the place. But I like the photos, so in the end I guess it’s all worth it. Even the occasional scratches from some branch that got in the way.

This last week the weather was very temperamental, but there were some sunny spells, and I’m glad I took advantage of them. I used my Sigma 18-200mm lens, and although I had to get used to having zoom again (after only using my 50mm prime lens the last couple of weeks) it worked quite well. The results? Well, see for yourself. Some more tiny wonders from God’s perfect nature!

The last picture is an HDR I created from 3 bracketed shots. I’ve loved that tree ever since the first time I saw it in its autumn colours, maybe also because it stands a little on its own. I just had to capture it and because the light was quite low (it being very early in the morning), I decided to go for HDR, as this gives me the opportunity of getting a little more detail than an ordinary shot would have provided me with. I think from all my photos of that day it’ll remain one of my favourites, simply because the tree is special to me, and because when I walked up the hill, I got to see the sunrise and two cute bunnies running across my path. How is that not a lovely way to start the day?

Category: General Photography
Tags: autumn, HDR, heath, morning run, nature