For me, the first chills of autumn make me start wondering about the future ahead and the many ways Nature prepares for the oncoming winter.
I have over the years often used the infrared approach to capture the alteration of mood in the environment I'm located in. IR makes the autumn colour changes a swan song instead of the explosion of colours we so often met in the visible realm. Like Nature sings on a lower frequency as it were.
Here are a few first-autumn impressions from the mixed woods around my girl friend, Ruth's place north of Oslo. Species diversity is quite low and for the deciduous trees, mainly comprise Downy Birch (Betula pubescens) and Goat Willow (Salix caprea). Horsetails (Equisetum sylvaticum) are abundant on damp forest floors. Ruth preferred the drier grounds and gathered amazing quantities of bilberries and cowberries, whilst I scampered around on damper soils to get my autumn shots with the IR-modified Nikon D5300 and the new AFS 20 mm f/1.8 Nikkor. This 20 mm might have an occasional IR hot spot if stopped down too far, but otherwise behaves exemplary with good sharpness and workable AF in IR.
