A Walk in the Leaves

Our hot dry summer was hard on Ottawa’s trees. They’re turning colour pretty well but are also dropping their leaves a little earlier than usual. Fall leaves look their best in full, bright, warm sunshine and strong blue skies, but this weekend we took our chances with the “partly sunny, partly cloudy” forecast on the grounds that to wait for better conditions was to risk missing the show entirely.

You see what I mean. Although we’re only just into autumn, the fall is far advanced.

2-photo collage showing extent of leaf-fall

And although I’m sure I want to take photos of leaves, when I get on-site I find that I’m less sure of some other things. Should I pull back for a group shot of trees, for instance, or go in close for a mass of leaves?

2-photo collage of fall leaves

Will the singleton specimen illustrate the scene, or will the more traditional landscape photo work better?

2-photo collage of singleton tree and a bank of trees

In close-up, will the leaves stand out sufficiently from the background?

3-photo collage of fall leaves

And in a city that often seems entirely devoid of sense, who *was* the clever person who planted these yellows to set-off all of Ottawa’s defining oranges and reds?

2-photo collage of yellow fall leaves

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8 Responses to A Walk in the Leaves

  1. Tom Watson says:

    Isabel
    The leaves make beautiful landscape patterns both on the trees and on the ground.
    Tom

  2. Every fall photo of leaves is worth taking. Thanks for these beautiful displays caught in your “frame”.

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Judith – At least I’ve stopped collecting the leaves themselves . . . 🙂 It makes for surprising crumbs at odd moments.

  3. Marilyn Smith says:

    Yes, gorgeous colour, Isabel, even on a cloudy day — uplifting! I, too, have stopped collecting red leaves, well, as of this season, at least until I come across the perfect one! Then I can’t help myself!

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Marilyn – I used to have the excuse of sending them to my mother (thereby crumbing-up her suite). Maybe we could set up a leaf-pal service for seniors in the western provinces.

  4. The changing of colours and the falling of the leaves are two of the greatest and most pervasive of Canadian memes, I thought, until I learned that Western Canadians are restricted primarily to the golden of aspen leaves and Inuit are so unfamiliar with trees that, when they do see them here in the South the trees take some getting used to. At first, these friends said, they feared the entire tree might fall on them.

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Laurna – Western Canada does have some oranges and true browns in trees, and strong reds in small bushes. But we/they lack the reds we take for granted here. This reminds me of a conversation with a West Coaster who laughed when I said that Canadians think of themselves as a northern people. Not in BC, I gather. There, they identify with the ocean. I expect this is true in the Atlantic provinces, as well. It’s a big country, and many of us know too little about each other’s reality.

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