My love for Autumn began with approximately 500 artificial leaves.
Yes. Artificial ones. 🍂
At the time, we were living in North Carolina, and I had already started studying photography. One of our photography challenges was, appropriately enough, about Autumn.
There was only one small problem.
Autumn hadn’t arrived.
The challenge ran from around the end of September into the middle of October. If you have ever lived in North Carolina, you probably already understand my problem. Despite the word North in its name, North Carolina wasn’t particularly interested in giving me northern weather. 😄
It was still warm. Still humid. The trees were green. Everything around me seemed to be saying summer while my photography assignment was asking me to find Autumn.
I remember looking around and thinking, What exactly am I supposed to photograph?
And then my creative side took over.
If I couldn’t find Autumn, I would have to create it.
So I went on Amazon and ordered what I remember being around 500 artificial Autumn leaves. And I was lucky. When they arrived, they were surprisingly beautiful—yellow, orange, amber, red. Good imitations, too.
Suddenly, I had my Autumn.
Or at least 500 little pieces of it.
And then I started playing.
I put leaves around an open book and created my own Autumn reading scene.
I used them with a glass to create an Autumn drink.
I placed a colorful leaf inside an empty picture frame, surrounded by the stubbornly green North Carolina landscape.
I even used them for a photograph of my son walking, with one Autumn leaf caught beneath his shoe.
But my favorite creation was much more ambitious.
I decided to make an Autumn umbrella.
I took an ordinary umbrella, covered it with plastic bags, and then began gluing those artificial leaves onto the plastic. One after another after another, until the umbrella disappeared beneath a huge canopy of orange, yellow and red.
Then my wife became my wonderfully patient model and walked beneath it while I photographed her from behind.
I still love that photograph.
Most of the image is black and white, while the umbrella explodes with Autumn color. Looking at it today makes me smile because the photograph accidentally tells the whole story.
The real world around us wasn’t ready for Autumn.
So I carried my own Autumn into it.
At the time, though, I wasn’t thinking about any of this. I wasn’t trying to discover a new favorite season. I wasn’t looking for some deeper meaning.
I was a photographer with a challenge to complete and a problem to solve.
But something happened while I was arranging those leaves, choosing colors, building scenes, looking through my camera and trying one idea after another.
I started enjoying Autumn.
Not because someone told me how beautiful it was. Not because suddenly every tree around me turned orange.
I fell in love with Autumn by creating it.
And perhaps that’s why photography changed the season for me so completely. It made me stop thinking about what Autumn was supposed to be and start discovering what it could make me feel.
Today, when I look at these old photographs, I see much more than a photography challenge.
I see the beginning.
And perhaps there is something beautifully funny about the fact that something I love so genuinely today began with something completely artificial.
Those 500 leaves were fake.
But what they started in me was very real. 🍂📷
GK
