October Comes...

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

- George Cooper, October's Party

October is here....it's FINALLY here! I could just shout it from the rooftop, couldn't you? The one month I live for, the rest of the calendar year! October has come calling. October...my oldest friend, who promises every year to come around and see me once again. Welcome back old friend....let the good times begin!

The Great Halloween Countdown begins NOW! I will do my very best to be a good and dutiful Denizen of Halloween in this year's Countdown. Sometimes it gets rough, the closer we get to Halloween Day, because the festivities start flying fast and furious by then and finding a moment to blog can get tough. But I will make an attempt to post something Halloween / Autumn related every day. Most of the posts will be my related art, photography, poetry, stories and whatnot. But some days it might just be an image of the day, or someone else's interesting tidbit. But I will do my best to be a keeper of the Halloween flame.

So today I am sharing what is probably my all time favorite image I've ever taken. I've shot so many photos that you'd think it would be hard to pick a favorite. But this was one of those once in a life time shots that you get because all the stars are aligned perfectly and you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. This image above was taken several years ago in Woodstock, Vermont. (click on the image to view full size) Woodstock is one of my top 5 favorite places in New England, and I go back there every single time we travel to that area. This is an extremely picturesque village, but in the autumn time, it is brimming with tourists and leaf peepers. Sometimes the traffic through downtown is slowed to a crawl. And in this town is a very quaint old covered bridge that you can drive and walk through.

So the ever patient hubby was circling around the town square so we could drive through the bridge again and again, thereby allowing me to hang out the car window to get my shots. But as fate would have it, on one of our loops through the bridge....the hubster spots this antique car in the rear view mirror, and he yells to me to get my camera ready quick because I was about to get a once in a lifetime shot. The old car was stopped at the light, but was beginning to make its turn to go through the bridge. I was fumbling with my camera, panicked that I was going to miss the shot while trying to get the dang thing turned on. I was wrestling with the camera and everything that could go wrong was going wrong, while my husband kept screaming "hurry up, get ready, here it comes, hurry, hurry"....which only served to make me more of a nervous bumbling wreck. Finally, at the LAST second, and I do mean the very last second.... I locked in the settings and managed to launch myself out the open car window at the waist, leaning as far out as I could. And I managed to fire off ONE shot, as that car drove through the bridge on a gorgeous, perfect Autumn day.

ONE shot! I sat stupefied by the prospect that if I had any camera shake at all....that one shot could easily be the proverbial 'one that got away.' I looked at my screen on the back of the camera and at 2 inches, it looked fine....but I'd only know for sure after we got back to the hotel and I could view it full sized on the screen of the laptop. But as I looked out at the bridge again, I realized that there were cars and people milling about EVERYWHERE. That meant that the possibility of having a 'clean' shot was probably nil, even if the image quality was decent.

Well, as I said....the stars aligned for me that day. For at the precise moment in time that I shot that camera, and the vintage antique automobile rambled into the covered bridge...there was not a car immediately behind it, and the people that were everywhere....just happened to be either in the bridge where they couldn't be seen, or out of range of my lens. On a moments notice....I got the most incredible Autumn shot and NOTHING else was in the frame to detract from it. It may seem like I am making much ado about nothing, but the only way to capture a shot like that would be to have the road closed to traffic and pedestrians, a hired automobile and driver and the perfect lighting conditions.....none of which did I have that day. It was sheer dumb luck and karmic timing that allowed that photo to be taken that day. A ton of things had to fall into place for that to happen, and they did. And besides the fact that the image will always remind me of one of my favorite places in my favorite season....it also makes me happy knowing that I could never duplicate it again. It's another fine example of that 'serendipity' that I love so much. And it also reminds me to be grateful for the little things in life that mean so much!
Just last month I was contacted by someone at Morgan Stanley / Smith Barney about using this same image on wine bottles that they would be giving to their top 40 clients for Thanksgiving. They used the original long version, but here is a standard wine label I created from the image in a painted version. I kind of like it and thought it might be a cool idea to use for my own gifts as well. Happy 1st day of October!