Fall shots

Finally. It’s fall again.

I love this time of year. The chill in the air. The technicolor wonder of the foliage. The soft, acute sunlight. The lengthening shadows. The brilliant sunsets filtered through harvest dust. The early evenings. The hint of burning wood in the air. Football. More than any other season, autumn is woven into my personal fabric. I pine for it all year and try to savor it as long as I can while it’s here.

Autumn is also when I seriously think about getting a nice camera. Perhaps not a Digital SLR (which would be awesome), but something better than my simple and trusty little Nikon. (I guess I could use my Olympus film camera, but I have no zoom lens for it. It is a thought, though. Frankly, I miss printed photos. It has been a long time since I last felt the thrill of looking through a bundle of freshly printed photos and seeing them for the first time.) But in the meantime, while I continue to ponder about a new camera, I plan to keep my Nikon handy to snap shots of beautiful fall colors and post them here. Touches of red, yellow, and orange are beginning to color the tops of trees and the outer reaches of long branches, and soon the skyline will be awash in autumn hues. Soon afterward, the branches will be bare and the annual show will be over. Again. (A number of the ashes, it seems, are almost already bare, having dropped their leaves early and unspectacularly due to drought stress.) I plan to enjoy it for as long as I can — at least until the winter solstice.