Maris Rusis
Member
Late Fall, Lake Jindabyne
Gelatin-silver photograph on Ultrafine Silver Eagle VC FB photographic paper, image size 21.3cm X 16.4cm, from a Fomapan 400 4x5 negative exposed in a Tachihara 45GF double extension field view camera fitted with a Schneider Super Angulon 75mm f5.6 lens and a #25 red filter. Titled and signed recto, stamped and annotated verso.It is an unusual thing in Australia to see fallen Autumn leaves. The continent has no native deciduous plants, save a single rare relic in Tasmania, in order to mark the change of seasons. The shores of Lake Jindabyne are planted with imported poplars and their leaf colours and fall are a sublime thing. I am reminded of the words of the American woodsman and philosopher Henry David Thoreau:
"It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves, how gently lay themselves down and turn to mold!--painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust. again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of a tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as graceful and as ripe..."
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