The first photograph I ever took in my life was five or six years ago, I ordered a Canon 5 D, walked out onto the path at Bedlam Farm and it was Fall, I remember, late Fall, and all of the leaves had fallen from the trees and I thought “okay, if you want to be a photographer, start seeing the beauty in small and ordinary things,” and so I started taking photos of dead leaves. The photos were brown and grainy, I wouldn’t put them up today, but I thought even that, they dead leaves were quite beautiful, once you pay attention to them. I thought of that today, walking in the woods with Maria and Frieda and Red and Lenore.

It was a very gorgeous early Fall Day, the leaves are just beginning to turn in the deep woods and I looked to the ground and saw a band of sunlight penetrating the deep forest, the leaves framed by two tree trunks and there were some beautiful leaves catching the last light of the fading sun. I had my 35 mm and it was, I thought, the wrong lens for this photo, I couldn’t get close enough, but I leaned over and got right on top of the leaves and brought my ISO way down. It wasn’t until I put the photo up on my computer that I saw I had gotten the photo that I wanted.

And I thought about fallen leaves and what a cliche they can be, everyone sees them as symbols of life and death, but the thing about cliches is that they are cliches because they are so true. The leaves inspire me, they remind me that life can be rich and beautiful and colorful right up to the time we fade and die. Life and death are not two different things, they are the same thing, and I have learned in my own life that when I stop running from the one I can fully live the other. This, I think, is why fallen leaves are so beautiful to me.