Autumn Wandering

I haven’t spent much time in West Virginia during the fall season over the past few years. This year, I was in California. The three preceding years I was in Chicago. Thus, the last time I had the opportunity to shoot fall colors in West Virginia was back in 2007. And I remember how incredibly wet that year was! The colors never really peaked: as soon as the leaves changed enough to display any color, it would rain again and all the leaves would fall off. And colors aren’t naturally vibrant under cloudy skies.

Under situations like this, one has to change his objective from shooting color to shooting shapes and feelings. And that is why this twisty little road caught my eye. It’s the road that leads down to my family’s home, so I saw it practically every day, and as the leaves slowly changed color, all I had to do was wait until the right trees had turned color. Somehow, the freshly fallen leaves littering the road added to the coziness of the scene, and the fact that the sky was overcast didn’t make much of a difference because no sky was visible in the composition. In fact, the cloudy skies only made the available light very soft.

All these factors, plus the fact that it was one of the only nice pictures taken that fall season, are reasons why I chose this image to be one of only 12 images used in Lenspiration’s 2012 Calendar, now available for purchase online at Lenspiration.com.