A fine autumnal day
A brilliant addition to my pictures of people taking pictures!
Susan photographs a tree on our walk to lunch, November 2015.
“It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.” – Washington Irving
The most wonderful thing happened in early November. Remember that fabulous photo of New Hampshire that Susan recently shared with us? Well, she decided to zip on down the coast to Florida, and along the way, she was able to visit with Raynard, Mary and Ms. Ella, and the next day, with me. So not only was she able to share the fall foliage of her home with us; I was able to share what remained of Virginia’s autumn colors with her too — live and in person! I’m always excited to meet people I’ve come to know through this blog. Each face-to-face encounter feels like a sparkling little miracle.
Washington Irving might well have been writing about us instead of Ichabod Crane when he penned the lines quoted above. Susan’s visit happened to fall on a day when the weather couldn’t have been finer. We decided to walk to the café for lunch, and I had not been outdoors for five seconds when I decided I didn’t even need the light jacket I had on. It was sunny and clear and gorgeous, and even with a short-sleeved shirt on, I was as warm as if it had been summer.
As I’ve written here before, I love taking pictures of people taking pictures, and Susan was a good sport about it. In fact, she was a good sport about everything. At the time she arrived, I had been having one of those days when I was distracted by large and small worries. Our time together was a wonderful respite from business as usual. We took a few extra minutes to stroll down the lovely wooded walk behind our home; you may recognize it as the one I shared in this post, though it looks different in the fall.
Ever patient, Susan paused for another photo during our woodland walk.
Thank you, Susan, for being willing to interrupt your trip for a brief visit that shone a bright light into my day! Thank you, Washington Irving, for your description of autumn that lives on with as much relevance today as when it was published nearly 200 years ago. And special thanks to our blog community here for being with us through these words and photos. You’re all invited along on our next adventure. Stay tuned!
This post was first published seven years ago today. Newer readers may not realize this is the same Susan you see (and read) frequently in the comments. Now you can see her beautifully smiling face as well!
The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
Defeat Despair 
Good morning, Julia!
Lately, I haven’t been carrying my camera with me, because I keep hearing how wonderful the optics are in today’s cell phones….. But, I have to say that these phones don’t capture depth of field perspectives the way a camera with a larger aperture can. I would like to figure out how to travel lightly enough to allow for the extra weight and bulk of my camera and gear.
Thank you for all the encouragement you give me, Julia!
Susan, you’re welcome! And yes, I totally agree with you about the camera dilemma. I faced it first when Jeff gave me the wonderful, compact digital Canon Sure Shot (and later, others like it) that I have since used to take about 99.9% of the photos I made, until I got a cell phone with a decent camera. I have a lovely digital Canon SLR and my beloved old Canon film camera sitting mostly forgotten on the shelf. Now along comes cell phones, which I HATE using because outdoors, it is so hard to see the screen due to glare and competing light. But convenience trumps all, it seems…often (almost always) it’s the only camera I have with me, so it’s that or nothing. Maybe the two of us should plan sometime to take a photo day (wherever we can manage to meet up) in which we ONLY take our SLRs and all the gear that goes with them. We might end up deciding it’s not worth it. But I agree with you that something has been lost in the rush to cell phone photos. And pictures are so commonplace now that they are scarcely valued at all.