Author: annefloa

Silent season

Winter is beautiful.

The landscape and the forest is covered in snow making patterns you haven’t seen before. A chaotic but systematic pattern sprinkled with golden leaves, just to amaze you.

Winter is the silent, colorless and dark season. Different from the colorful and noisy autumn.

Nature now rests until spring arrive.

Snow covered trees.

Winter – not yet

It is November and still the winter hasn’t arrived here in Norway. In this time of the year we use to have temperatures below zero and it is time for snow. But we still have a rather warm autumn and in the forest there still grows mushrooms.

On Friday when I went for a walk it was 13 C and the sun was shining. It was a wonderful day. I went to a view point in mye neighborhood, the first photo. The mushroom on the second photo is beautiful even though it is getting old and fading very soon. I am not sure what type it is and if it is edible, but it could be Hygrophorus hypothejus also known as “herald of the winter”.

Sunny forest details

Autumn is my favorite time of the year in many ways:

  • The temperature is very nice (not too hot)
  • The air is crisp and fresh
  • The sun is much lower in the sky = good light for forest photograpy
  • Mushrooms
  • Multicolored leaves
  • Beautiful decay of flowers and plants

On some of my walks I find a lot of mushrooms, in other walks I can spot different forest details. Especially when the sun is shining a photo safari in the woods can be very interesting when it comes to light and colors.

Sunny moss

Mycena and Stropharia – tiny mushrooms

A while ago I watched “Fantastic Fungi” together with my daughter. The mushroom kingdom is a fantastic world of fungi living and working together with both plants, trees and insects. The time lapses of growing mushrooms is so fun to watch.

Taking a walk in the forest after seeing this little documentary I decided to go look for the tiny mushrooms. The ones growing deep in the moss, on dead tree logs and among the fallen autumn leaves.

It was not easy to decide what types of mushroom I found but hopefully I have got the right family order for the mushrooms in the photo´s. The two first I think might be a part of the Mycena family. Number three is probably a Stropharia member due to the collar on the stem, the last one I am not sure about but it looks like it can be a part of the Armillaria family.

Mushrooms in October

After some days with heavy rain I went out for a walk nearby our house. I hoped to find some mushrooms to shoot. It was a quite short walk as the paths around here was muddy and very wet, some of them turn into creeks after the rainfall.

Well, I was lucky and found some mushrooms. I love to shoot mushrooms and this autumn they have been difficult to find. I was lucky to find some on my little walk, but they probably are the last ones this season. This week we actually had one day with snow, so winter awaits just around the corner.

Through the forest

Walking in the forest has always been one of my favorite things to do. When I was a child I loved to go for forest walks with my father. He thought me a lot of different plants, trees and berries. Maybe that’s why I grew so fond of macro photography.

It is a good combination to be fond of walks in the woods and macro photography. Finding the right target for macro photography takes some time so you have to walk slowly and use your eyes. It is necessary to leave the path because the most interesting macro targets often can be found on old tree logs, stones or hidden in the moss. Sometimes the sun beams hit a tree or a stone and gives you a lovely scenery when you walk by. For me walking through the forest it’s like being a part of a fairytale.

Fern

I was reading on wikipedia when I looked up fern that there are probably about 15000 different sorts of fern worldwide. About 200 sorts in Europe and 45 sorts in Norway. Interesting.

They kind of decorate the forest growing on a layer of moss which again grows on a stone, on an old tree log or a dead tree and alongside a little creek or covers an open field between the birches.

Fern

Reach for the sunlight

early spring

all curled up

Unfold

turning bright green

during summer

Color change

when autumn comes

curling up again

Under the old oak tree

When I walk my dog I have several paths to choose between. Beside one of these paths there are some quite old trees, well I assume that they are old. One of these old trees, a spruce, is very large. I am trying to find a way to take a good photo of it, but so far I haven’t succeeded. I have tried different angles, but it doesn’t look good.

The other old trees alongside this path are two oak trees which stands almost next to each other. As they are very big it is difficult to take photos of them in full figure but a shot from beneath shows the beauty in these trees, I think. The chunky, grey log against the light green leaves is a good looking color combination together with the light blue sky above.

I wonder how old these two oaks really are?

Wonderful autumn

Autumn is a wonderful time of the year when nature present a beautiful and colorful world.

Walking through the woods and watch the leaves, still on the trees, in all shades of red, yellow and brown is just a beautiful and inspiring experience.

Leaves covers the path I am walking on and the sound of them beneath my feet is kind of joyful and reminds me of a little child playing, gathering a pile of leaves, throwing them up in the air, laughing as they fall down to the ground.

Birch leaf in the sun
Aspen leaf with droplets
Rowan leaf
Blueberry leaves