A Hint of Autumn - a photo on Flickriver

A Hint of Autumn

            There’s no denying that it’s on the way.  The temperatures have fallen, the swallows are departing, and the long evenings are no more as we lurch headlong out of summer and into the next season; the season so many of us look especially forward to.  Personally, I miss the long warm days and being able to dry the washing outdoors, and to stave things off for a bit longer, we’re following the swallows and heading off to somewhere south of here; somewhere the sun still shines and the mercury heads beyond the twenty celsius mark each day as a matter of course.  When we return, autumn will be in full swing and we’ll be reaching for the central heating controls with grim expressions.  But at least the photography will be good.

It’s hard to compute the fact that just over two years have already passed since that final Friday at work, when speeches were made, tears were shed, and a small bath full of gin and tonic was consumed at the Old Ale House in Truro.  Where did the time go?  A few days later, finally released into the community, Ali and I were here in the van, on a quiet rural estate campsite next to the River Usk.  At the time it hadn’t really sunk in - wouldn’t for a few months in fact, that I wasn’t going back to work.  I’d done it.  All of that planning and scrimping had paid off and the big day had come and gone in the blink of an eye.  A dot in life’s landscape - albeit a seismic one, as far as we were concerned.  Ahead of us lay autumn, and while a grand tour in some far flung exotic land would have been the order of the day in normal times, we were still seesawing in and out of lockdown, with far too many hoops to twist and turn through in order to make it beyond passport control at almost every destination.  Those times would come again one day, but for now we were in the van exploring the margins of South East Wales.  And autumn was coming.  It wasn’t a bad place to be.

It was my sister who introduced us to the Beacons, and let us in on the secret hideaway she’d found high up in the hills.  A few summer days up in the mountain valleys each year had become a thing for us, a new touchstone where we could roam for hours and barely see another person.  We’d been here less than three months earlier, and it was no difficult decision to return to the area by ourselves and explore new spaces in the quiet early days of October.  After a few nights just above the border town of Hay on Wye and its shops of endless bookshelves, we came to the Glanusk Estate, a couple of miles outside Crickhowell.  And thanks to the hangover of the pandemic, we had two spaces to ourselves and were even able to choose self imposed isolation in the far corner of the field via the online booking process.  When we arrived, we knew we’d chosen well.  A long way from anything that resembled a busy road, only the sounds of the natural world filled our ears in this exclusively green space.

Just opposite our pitch was the entrance to the woods and one of the trails that led across the estate, and within two minutes of stepping from the van I’d discovered this gem of a location, where soft sunlight spilled in from the south west and splashed its rays across the glade.  Sometimes you might walk for an hour or two in order to find your shot, maybe taking in a few hundred metres of ascent into the bargain, but here I could bring a mug of tea straight from the kettle and happily immerse myself in a bit of forest bathing.  Like many of us, I’m usually frowning in confusion when it comes to photographing trees and wondering how the likes of Simon Baxter and Joe Cornish distil such beauty from the compositional carnage around them, but here, things somehow seemed easier.  Three or four compositions presented themselves so eagerly that deciding which one I wanted to share in telling the story was a bit of a struggle.  I do like it when a tree or two lean towards the middle of the frame.

And with that, I'm very possibly off the radar for a while as I believe the WiFi where we're going is a bit sketchy.  Probably a bit of interference from those millions of swallows flying overhead on their long journey down to the far side of the Sahara Desert.  I'll do my best to keep up with you all, but apologies if it all goes sideways. Thank you so much for all of the support, and if you've read this far, thanks to you especially.  I always love to hear the responses to these stories.  So for now, Τα λέμε, and I'll be back soon. You may now commence with your online language deciphering applications.

Taken in: UK / Wales / Llanfihangel Cwmdu with Bwlch and Cathedine / Tretower (show map)

Taken on: October 3, 2021

Tags:

Wales

Brecon

Crickhowell

Usk

Glanusk

trees

tree

forest

Woodland

path

South Wales

green

Great Britain

Britain

Cymru

Kase

Canon

nature

glow

autumn

leaves « less

Sets appears in: • Wales • Explored more » • Brecon Beacons « less

Groups appears in: • Trees, Trees and More Trees • Photography Week more » • in explore • Amateur Photographer Magazine • Flickr Social • WONDERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN GENERAL.MARAVILLAS DE LA FOTOGRAFIA EN « less

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, f/16.0, 2.5 sec, 35mm, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Lens:	EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
Aperture:	f/16.0
Exposure Time:	2.5
Focal Length:	35mm
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 11.1 (Windows)
Show full info

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