Reflections on Autumn
The inevitable seasonal change from summer to Autumn is always an interesting and exciting time to be outdoors and observe the changes in the natural world. As the cycles of nature unfold before us and the day light hours become shorter the rhythm of life seems to slow down, at least it does for the natural world, something that I think we can all learn from as the pace of everyday life for a lot of people in the modern world of work continues on in much the same way as the rest of the year. It's this kind of observation that makes me think that the busy life of towns and cities detaches us from the natural world from which we evolved from and the more detached we are from it the more out of balance our lives seem to be. This comes back to why I love to spend time in the outdoors as I believe there's a relationship to the earth as a species that we've forgotten and as such we've lost our sense of place within it and also our sense of what we are. This detachment has created a lack of environmental empathy and so we see this destructive world out of harmony with the very planet that makes it all possible in the first place. It's one of the reasons I love the feeling of being completely immersed in the forest, the sense of being connected to the natural landscape and the experience taps into our true nature. Photography is in some way the art of observation and translation of the experience into something that encapsulates the feeling and emotion of the experience. There's a desire in me to remember our connection to the earth, photography is a way of bringing that back with me.
"We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we have lost our connection to ourselves.” - Andy Goldsworthy -
Here's a couple of shots from Autumn 2019 from Ornamental Drive in the New forest. This area is always an inspiring area to go and looks fantastic in the Autumn.
This first shot is one of my favourites, the colour of the leafs transform the area and give a completely different feel. With the ground sloping away I could angle the camera down eliminating the sky and just focusing on the leafs and the trunk of the tree as the subject. I love the contrast between the yellow leafs and the brown ones on the forest floor.
This second one of a different tree in the same area a few weeks later has lost almost all it's leafs, revealing it's tendril like branches reaching up in all directions to the sky. The bright colours having now gone giving this image a pallet of rusty browns giving it a completely different feeling to the first. The cycle of trees bursting into abundance in the spring and summer to then give it's nutrients back to earth as the leafs decompose to create futile land is one example of the balance of nature. We can live abundant lives whilst at the same time give back to the earth and not be a force of destruction if we find our own rhythm within it.
Also in News
