I live at 39N latitude and this is my favorite time of the year for photography. As much as I appreciate the chromatic brilliance of the foliage, that is not what excites me. It is simply the light.
The smog and haze of summer have finally dissipated, and on clear days the slanting golden light renders the world in sharp definition for several hours every morning and afternoon.
If Henry David Thoreau had been a photographer, I think he would agree. This is from his essay "Walking":
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadows eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.
Amen to that.
Scott
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