Fall foliage color are now past their peak in the mountains and fallen leaves are increasing littering the lawns and the streets of the suburbs where I live. Today I thought I would share a few more foliage photos from my trip to Shenandoah National Park earlier this month before those memories are swept away with those fallen leaves.
While I was driving along Skyline Drive in the national park, I was repeatedly struck by the “skeleton trees.” That is my term for the bare white trees that I often saw interspersed with their leafy counterparts—they somehow reminded me of the ribs of a skeleton.
I could not determine if my skeleton trees were dead or had simply lost their leaves, but did not spending too much time pondering that question. Instead, I concentrated on capturing a sense of their stark beauty. The first photo is definitely my favorite of the three—I remember spending a lot of time trying to compose the image very carefully, a kind of luxury for me that I do not usually get when taking wildlife photos.
I am not quite ready to bid farewell to autumn, but there are definitely signs that winter is on its way. I’m hanging on tenaciously to the final month of autumn, enjoying the remaining bits of fall color.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Very nice series of images Mike! Enjoyed seeing them!
Getting close to ‘stick’ season up there. These are the fall images I always enjoy. Nice shots.
Excellent photos, Mike.
Mike the skeleton trees are actually not too hard to gauge once you get close. Living trees have a full compliment of twigs the smallest branches. Once a tree dies storms, strong winds, squirrels, and birds do a good job of snapping off these small twigs. As time proceeds bigger and bigger branches are dropped until the tree looks like the second image. And the immediate test is a small scrape of the bark on a twig. If there is green under the bark it is still among the living.
Thanks, John, for the tips. I kind of figured the tree in the middle photo was dead, but couldn’t figure out what happened to the small twigs. Your explanation helps me understand the cycle of the life of the trees.
We woke up to a blanket of snow here in Kitchener, Ontario this morning. I’m not ready for this!
Nice compositions, Mike. I love seeing old snags in the forest– even dead, they are very much ‘alive’ with life. I tend to think of them as birdie B&Bs. 🙂