The light being low, with a mizzly fret threatening – but staying off – the afternoon has been perfect for photographing in the dunes. I went to Boston a few years back and walked through a cemetery lit with psychedelic reds and oranges during Fall in Massachusetts. “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,” wrote Henry David Thoreau on living in those woods of flame. And here, getting up close with my favourite macro lens: the same autumnal chemistry burnishing and bronzing the Tughall flora.
And so, from summer’s juicy greens come autumnal fires as chlorophyll leaches out to other let these other colours shine through. I can’t help thinking of it as a “yawp” (to borrow from another Transcendentalist) accompanying the grand release of seed, before the withdrawal of resources underground.
And with the draining of water from stems, the plant-life begins to crackle and brown, seedcases finally shrivelling. Late butterflies and moths flicker around the remaining flowers. Bumble bees slow and creep around the ground. Slugs horns test the damp airs. Underfoot is gloopy and now is the time of fungi.
