September Morning

This post is about color and light.  It's isn't really about the chokecherry bush in our back yard. This post is about a time of the year told through the perspective of color and light. 

The color for the last couple months has been nothing but green. It's like someone spray painted green across the entire landscape. The grass was the greenest it has ever been. The corn stayed dark green all summer long. The leaves on the trees, the weeds along the road, the hay fields - green, green, and more green!

But just like that, the greenest summer I can remember is fading away. The first hints were the soybean fields turning yellow. Then the ash trees, which are always the first to go, turned yellow. And now there are dry brown oak leaves on the ground getting mulched as we cut the grass which grows slower each week. And in the distance, where only a short time ago there was nothing but green, hints of yellow and light brown are telling us Summer is being replaced by Autumn. 

But is there any more impressive color than the impossibly blue sky under a clear September morning sun?  The angle of light and the sky on a clear September day look different than at any other time of the year.  And the bright yellow-green leaves and the intense red berries on the Chokecherry bush against that clear blue sky accomplished the impossible - it caused me to get up out of my Saturday morning chair on the patio. 

I often talk about seeing the extraordinary in the commonplace as more rewarding photography than that of exotic locations. It can't get any less exotic than this - I was sitting on our patio early on a Saturday morning, looked to my left and saw the green and red against that great blue sky. And if I had my camera on the chair with me I would not have even had to stand up!

Enjoy Autumn!

Brian ReitenauerComment