A GLIMPSE OF FALL

Last fall, I went for a walk at the Morgan Arboretum, located in the town of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. In addition to enjoying the crisp air of this season that I love so much, my goal was to photograph the forest as a whole, to capture the richness and scale of this place in the fall. Despite several attempts, none of the images managed to convey what I was feeling in the face of this abundance of colors and textures.

That’s when my perspective shifted. Rather than seeking a wide-angle view, I began to observe the leaves more closely, photographing them individually. I thought to myself that these photographs might come in handy one day, in case I needed to paint their details. So I had fun capturing the leaves from different angles, observing how the light reacted; sometimes passing through the leaf, sometimes reflecting off another surface.

Back in the workshop, as I looked through my photographs again, one thing became clear: beauty lay not only in the grandeur of the forest, but in the infinitely small. By combining several photographs in Photoshop, I then chose to compose an image that highlighted the beauty of the leaves. Of course, their veins and vibrant colors caught my eye, but it was their imperfections above all that captured my attention. The marks left by insects, the spots, the tears, the worn edges, or the breaks; each tells a unique story and gives every leaf its own distinctiveness and beauty. Without these traces of time, the leaves would be uniform and characterless. To me, they remind us that beauty often arises from imperfection.

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