November's Lesson...

Skeleton leaf

       ...November, and we are fast approaching the first snows of the winter.  It would seem that we had an Indian summer that amounted to all of four days at best.  The change was noticeable as if ordered for delivery on November 1st.  The skies changed to the moody, broody gray of November, and the breeze had a distinctly different smell to it.   As I walked around town I could hear the papery dry rustling of leaves blowing in the breeze.  There was a quiet quality to the couple of blocks I had walked to reach Lake Anna in the center of town.  Leaves were dropping from the trees in mass, creating a golden carpet everywhere. Even when the skies were overcast there was still a golden light reflected from the leaf covering throughout the neighborhood.  The color displays were not so dazzling this year as in years passed.  But the best was yet to come.  That is where the lesson of less being more comes into play.  It is the middle of the month and many of the trees are bare.  The exciting part is that there are blazes of color with individual trees in a landcape of dark sticks of bare trees.  The light in November seems to act like spotlights in a theatre emphasizing the brilliant color of the singular trees with red and gold foliage left on their branches.  Some trees look as though the individual leaves were glued onto the branches with lots of space in between.  Less is more.  With the backdrop of dark gray skies and vibrant sunlight squeaking through cracks in the clouds the solo leaf displays are even more breathtaking.  Ah, to be a leaf on a day such as this!  As a photographer, I am thrilled to the core with the dramatic light-dances that November presents.  It is the festival of candy corn colors in the last Mardi Gras celebration for nature before the bleak white and gray of winter leaches the vibrancy of fall foliage from the landscape.  This is the time when  find myself concentrating on individual leaves and light plays as I capture my leaf images.  It stirs the imagination to thoughts of  elves and fairies, to green man myths, and the forest nymphs who slip around the trees just beyond one's peripheral vision.  I will miss that when the snows come.  But my pictures will remind me how less is more, and how a picture is worth a thousand words.  Sparse leaves, plus minimal lighting, plus gray skies, equals...November...

Tricolor grape leaves

Elf leaf

Blazing leaves