Look Up

Now for something totally different! I took these pictures on a whim when I was standing in the forest. I just happened to look up and decide to take a few pictures. I had no idea how they would turn out but I think I like the results.

This first picture shows off the fall colors nicely. There are still plenty of leaves on the trees, but the sunlight has changed from the way it was in the summer. It seems strange but more sunlight seems to get down into the forest now on these dimmer fall days than it did on the brighter summer days.

I don't quite understand why it is, but maybe it's because of the angle that the sunlight is coming in. The forest is brighter even on the rainy days now. I showed you a few times in the summer how a rainy day could almost blacken the forest to seem like night. It's still very bright in the middle of this same forest on the darkest days of fall.

I actually took this picture before the other one, but I thought the other one looked a little better because there were more leaves on the trees. What do you think? This is where I first got the idea to do this. Now that I think about it, I did it partially because of that brightness that I talked about.

When I happened to look up I saw how the light came down and still shined on me even though I was in the very center of the forest. I could now see the sky, while all I would have seen here a few short months ago was a dark ceiling of leaves. The forest seemed so big back then.

For some reason without as many leaves the forest seems to become much smaller. It's much harder to imagine myself so far away from civilization when it's like this. It will only shrink further when winter comes. Fall is a beautiful time but I find myself looking back to summer and missing what was.