Fall color season has arrived.
Today I spent four hours in Rude Skov among some of the most spectacular autumn colors you’ll find around here.
And for my English-speaking readers, the name has nothing to do with bad manners. Rude comes from an old Danish word meaning a clearing. How a forest ended up being named after a clearing is a mystery for someone else to solve.
What I do know is that Rude Skov is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to shoot photos. I wrote about it before after a winter visit where, apart from describing how I almost died, I suggested it might be worth returning in spring or autumn.
Well, it was. And this time my close encounter with death came from feeling as though I had died and gone to heaven rather than from choking on an insect.
The weather on this Friday afternoon was mostly gray, but I didn’t miss the sun. It did briefly appear at the beginning of my walk, just long enough to illuminate the hornbeam in the first image below, but apart from that there was no sunlight to assist me. As it turned out, it wasn’t really necessary.
Because after the sun had disappeared for good, the forest seemed determined to outdo itself at every turn.
Orange, yellow, and green filled the landscape in every direction. Wherever I looked there were photographs waiting to be made, and each time I thought the scenery couldn’t possibly improve, something even better appeared around the next bend.
One of those bends revealed one of the most beautiful forest lakes I have ever seen. The compositions there were endless. The only reason I finally moved on was the thought that something even more remarkable might be waiting farther along the trail.
This was the most satisfying day of photography I’ve had all year. I could easily have posted ten other photographs from the day that were every bit as good as the ones you see here.
The only drawback to Rude Skov is its proximity to Copenhagen. Compared to the forests farther north, there are more people around. And while I don’t mind sharing a trail, my photography walks are really about escaping the noise of everyday life and spending a few quiet hours alone in nature.
