Learning in the u3a movement

This was taken on a walk around the conservation village of New Lanark, a beautiful area of the Clyde Valley. The River Clyde has several waterfalls here which years ago provided water power to the cotton mills. It’s a really pretty area in Autumn and it’s a privilege to enjoy its beauty and nature.

These are a few of the thousands, if not millions of acorns, leaves and rose hips in our garden this year.

I wanted to emphasize the interesting colour and texture of these seed heads and I used a contrasting background to help them stand out.

I chose this as a rather less colourful image of Autumn. I enjoyed the variety of browns.

As a very different Hallowe'en approaches, this display of pumpkins gave me the idea, using Photoshop, of creating a sad lonely pumpkin.

Dawyck Botanic Garden, Scottish Borders: It was an overcast day but the trees at Dawyck were changing into their autumn colours. There was a constant stream of visitors stopping on the bridge to take a picture of the maple's red leaves, but no-one joined me up on the hillside, underneath a tree bearing gold/brown leaves, where this view could be captured.

After a windy night the dawn reveals a carpet of gold.

I thought that trees and leaves would be popular and considered a landscape but then decided to see how many different kinds of wild fruits and seed heads I could gather on one local walk as they seem to be particularly abundant this autumn. This arrangement has ash, field maple, yew, sloe, oak, horse chestnut, sweet chestnut, crab apple, hawthorn, elder, wild rose, holly, ivy, blackberry, woody nightshade, burdock and fungi.

There’s such an abundance of autumn fungi in the local woods. Fly agaric look so exotic, with their bright red colour. I wanted to capture the different textures, showing the gills. I use my iPhone 2020 SE. It’s compact, versatile and so user friendly.

A morning out looking for Autumn colours.

I wanted to capture the last bittersweet moments when autumn burns most brightly around us and so collected, backlit and photographed these two little Acer leaves.

Autumn is a lovely season and like all children I loved conkers and this photograph reminds me of the excitement of finding them and the wonderful shiny feel of them, coupled with the childhood pleasure of rustling through the autumn leaves.

I visited Bidford on Avon late one afternoon just before the 'golden hour' and the light was amazing. The sunlight cast a golden glow on the bridge which made it stand out beautifully. Added to that was a very dark and dramatic sky overhead and just behind the bridge making it stand out even more. I particularly enjoy taking photos in the late afternoon sun when you can capture some lovely long shadows, but on this particular evening, the light was very special.

As well as beautiful trees Autumn always means Fungi to me. I was amazed to find these enormous specimens when out on a walk recently.

This picture was taken at Herstmonceux Castle on a rare visit, due to Covid19 restrictions, from my family this year. Fungi are definitely signs of autumn.