Pine and needles, Woodbury, CT © Steven Willard

We get so interested in Fall colors it’s easy to overlook what else is going on around us. I had Wally, my dog, out for an afternoon stroll, and he surprised me by taking a different path than usual. No doubt he had caught the scent of a stranger, maybe a deer or a turkey, perhaps just a feral cat. At any rate, we were walking down a trail that wasn’t on our normal dog walk, when we came upon this pine tree standing in the middle of a bed of pine needles. They looked completely undisturbed, unusual because the grounds crew hadn’t swept them up.

It didn’t occur to me to make a photograph at first. Truthfully, I couldn’t imagine how to compose the subject, if there really was a subject. Here came Wally to the rescue. He found something he really liked the smell of and he refused to leave. I was stuck there, waiting while Wally had his nose to the ground, so why not make an exposure? So that’s what I did; I made one exposure while standing on his leash, and then he was satisfied. What a smart dog he was. I still miss him terribly.

Panasonic G3 with 20mm f1.7 lens, processed in Photoshop CS4 using Silver Efex Pro 2.

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