[image title="Rotting leaves on woodland floor" size="medium" id="1701" align="center" alt="Rotting leaves" linkto="viewer" ]

Most shots of Autumn leaves show pristine reds, oranges, browns and muted greens. I on the other hand have been looking for some not quite so pristine images. Autumn is after all about regeneration, the preparation for Winter and the eventual re-birth of Spring but before that can happen, the old materials must rot, releasing their nutrients into the soil. The continuous cycle of nature is not always truly depicted by photographers. So spare a thought for the rotten!

I have just arrived in Dorset this evening to spend 3 days down here with my Parents. This hospital malarkey has been a bit tiresome and a much needed escape from it all, definitely needed. I have noticed before that great sunsets often occur close to where my parents live and tonight a very moody sunset formed over to the West. I didn’t need to go very far at all from the house, this was taken from the back garden. I took this handheld (whereas I normally would employ the use of a tripod etc), using a Sigma lens with OS, the 18-200 to be precise. Set to 200 ISO and a reasonably mid-range aperture, ranging from f5.6 to f8 giving me a shutter speed of between 1/80 and 1/250 on the three shots shown above.

I am currently not able to lug lots of camera gear around since I am still healing up from my recent operation, so one camera and one lens is all I am allowing myself to use at the moment.

I love Autumn and was grateful to be able to take a stroll down to one of our local parks today. I am not able to go too far at the moment, so most of my walks for now will be restricted to Farnborough. I am also carrying a very light camera configuration currently to keep weight down below 4 kilos which is a safe weight, as I heal up!

This is also the first in the “Photo Walks” series but this is not going to be the long term format of these articles – I simply haven’t decided yet on a format!!

I didn’t take many shots either, as I was aiming specifically for some Autumn colours and found two trees that fitted the bill. Mind you they are shedding their leaves fast and I would urge you, wherever you live, to get out there soon, as I think come November a the peak of Autumn will have passed.

As the gallery grows, I thought I should pick out some of my favourite shots. Well the ones that I really enjoyed taking, as I love the places that I visited at the time. We have a mixture here that spans all the way from Farnborough to the Cinquentenaire in Brussels and a little bit of Capri, Italy.

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