By Photos by: Phil Grout

A Photo Essay

I have been fascinated with fall since childhood. As a photographer, I have long felt an attachment to fall and its onslaught of color. There is something glorious about a sugar maple blazing at the peak of autumn.

Of course, there is also the wonderment of a seed sprouting and turning into a plant, and then growing into a giant plant called a tree.

But it is the leaves of the trees that are the real mystery to me. Just imagine: the reds of a Japanese maple, or the yellows of mountain ash or the reds and yellows and oranges of a blazing sugar maple were all there in July. Any number of factors have to come along in October to drain the green of chlorophyll from each leaf to reveal the autumn’s cacophony of color.

But recently I have been turning my back on the trees and pointing my camera to the “echo” of fall reflected in a body of water. There is a hushed, mystical quality about of a rippling mirror of a stream, reflecting the ever-changing shapes of fall and the the constant color of autumn.