Fall Foliage

Every now and then an email drops into my inbox from Pete Marney, a former colleague and an excellent photographer.  His emails contain links to his latest set of photographs along with stories and anecdotes describing where and why they were taken.  It always makes a nice start to my day when they turn up and I spend a little while browsing through his pictures with my morning cuppa before getting on with my work.  His mails were one of the inspirations behind this blog as I wanted to find my own way of telling the stories behind my pictures so it follows that sooner or later I was going to use one of his pictures as inspiration too.  

Back in October I got a message titled "Fall Foliage" with a set of photographs taken on a weekend trip to somewhere called Skytop Lodge.  I'm not entirely sure where Skytop lodge is (the email didn't say) but it looks like a lovely place so, with Pete's permission, I decided to have a go at my own interpretation of those beautiful autumn leaves.  I used pastels to get the bright colours on a watercolour under painting.  It's one of those paintings that was hard to judge when it was time to stop.   I could probably have kept going for longer, adding to the trees but I'm not sure I'd have improved it by doing that so it's coming off the easel as soon as I've finished writing this.  

If you like this one than please go ahead and check out the original photo on Pete's website.  Unusually for me, I tried to stick pretty closely to the original photo this time.  I hope I've done it justice.