Strawberry Hill Heath - Part 2 (October 2020)

Just below Strawberry Hill on the boundary of the heath is Stallon Pond. I tend to stop at this point in the walk to capture the reflections in the water and, on this occasion, the autumn colours were out in force. These were some of the colours mainly using the partially submerged tree stumps as a focus point for the compositions:

To round off the Strawberry Hill Heath walk, which includes the red oak photographs shown in my previous post, are these autumnal beech and birch trees. I really got the sense that autumn was close to its colourful peak during this visit which re-doubled my efforts to get out with the camera as much as possible in the first week of November - more on this in forthcoming posts including a couple of days of mistiness in the forests which always provides good value for the photography...

Strawberry Hill Heath - Part 1 (October 2020)

The woodland around Strawberry Hill Heath is a good location for autumn colours. There are a number of red oaks which, as the name suggests, become very colourful at this time of year.

That said, I am never quite certain with my identification of these oaks and looking at the shape of the leaves I am guessing that there is more than one variety. 

The red oaks leaves, or those that I include under the heading of red oak, have pointed lobes rather than the rounded ones found on the traditional native pedunculate and sessile varieties. In fact, some of the leaves are huge in comparison.

These were some of the red oak colours captured during the visit:

October on the Southwell Trail - Part 4

The sun dipping under the cloud line late in the day was a feature of the weather towards the end of October. It provided five or ten minutes of warm sunlight just before sunset, often after a dull and uninspiring rest of the day. 

Taking advantage of this, I walked a section of the Southwell Trail that receives the best afternoon light for this selection of photographs:

After the sun had disappeared there was a fine afterglow including a rather dramatic funnel shaped cloud over the landscape:

River Trent (October 2020)

One problem with including references to poor weather in a photoblog, which I have done lately for October's photography, is then mainly showing photographs which includes bright sunshine!

I guess I mention poor weather because is reduces the opportunities for photography and I find myself having to make a call about where to go including taking account of the priorities for the time of year. For example, this trip to the River Trent, near Fiskerton, was made at the expense of another trip to the forest and woods for the autumn colours. 

That said, the Trent was high on my list for October. I had a note to revisit a willow tree that I had captured in late spring and later converted to black and white:

I was keen to see if I could repeat this composition with autumn colours, although the angle of the light and the time of day was different to the spring visit. These were some of the results:

As can be seen, it was a lovely bright morning by the Trent and these were some of the other scenes that I captured on the day:

By the time I had completed the walk the weather had changed and the clouds had rolled in. A couple of hours later it was raining yet again!