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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

WNY Idyll: An Autumn Leaves Postscript


 
       Well it seems that's it for another year and the balance is gradually shifting from tree to ground.  Not that the ground display isn't quite something. Gerard Manley Hopkins'  autumn-grieving Margaret would be blubbing her eyes out at this lot.
        There was a postscript to my leaf photography day . I drove down the Five Mile Road, which crosses the end of our lane and saw probably the best hill so far - evening light, old barn, cornfield, the works. But I couldn't stop easily. I tried driving up the nearest hollow but the view wasn't nearly as good. So I turned back again and pulled into a layby opposite the High School, hoping I wasn't doing anything illegal, still being a little hazy on New York traffic laws, which seem to be a moveable feast. (I was out driving with hubby the day before, with my camera handy and he kept unaccountably yelling, "You can't stop there!") Still, the addiction proved too strong and I jumped out of the car and started snapping. The next thing, a car pulled up on the other side of the road, the side I know you can't stop on. "Uh-oh" I thought, "It's law enforcement".  I was about to leg it back to the car, when a woman appeared beside me with a camera, "Just couldn't miss it! It's probably the last sunny day we'll have!"  Her camera was a little fancier than mine. I prided myself that she might be a pro. Great minds, I thought smugly, think alike.

    
  And great minds can be foiled too.  "I'm trying not to get those cables into the shot", she muttered. In my excitement, I hadn't even spotted them. It's the scourge of Western New York leaf photographers, the Heath Robinson arrangement of  thick,low-flying electric cables by every roadside.  So we had to make do with what we could get through the gaps.                                            

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