Can you imagine early man, migrating northward into Europe, encountering their first autumn.  All these trees, so green during the warm summer, now suddenly changing color and leaves dropping off in the wind.  The thought of death must have passed through their mind, this strange country where the wind has a chill and the vegetation dies as the sun slowly gets lower in the sky with each passing day.  What brave individuals lingered on through winter, to see the green return with the warming.

The image below was a surprise, fall coming much earlier than expected.  I'm walking along a path under a green summer canopy only to look down and see this yellow leaf on the ground.  Looking up I see many other yellow leaves waiting to drop.  Fall here already?  Where did that come from?

The dappling sunlight caught the leaf in a spot of light, highlighting it against the grass and ground.  I elected to put everything not in sunlight into dark shadow, keeping as much detail on the leaf as possible.  The resulting image is what I wanted - a mostly dark, shadowy image with just a few points of light, the main focus being on the leaf and its color.  With this effect it's almost as if the leaf is illuminated from within, providing light to the surrounding ground and objects.

Fading SummerFading Summer