Before the World Turns White
There is a season between the seasons that doesn’t really have a name.
It arrives after autumn has put on its grand display but before winter settles in. Most of the brilliant leaves have fallen. The trees are beginning to show their bare branches, mornings are colder, and the landscape has traded October’s oranges and reds for quieter shades of brown, gray, faded gold, and evergreen.
We tend to hurry through this part of the year. Autumn is beautiful and easy to celebrate. Winter brings its own kind of magic, especially when the first snow covers everything in white. But these weeks in between can feel like we’re simply waiting for something else to happen.
Lately, though, I’ve been trying to pay more attention to them. Because even when nature seems to have gone quiet, there’s still plenty to see.
A Quieter Kind of Beauty
When I take my camera outside during peak autumn, it’s easy to find something to photograph. Everywhere I look, there seems to be another splash of color demanding attention. This time of year asks me to look a little closer.
Without all those leaves, I begin noticing the shapes of the trees. I see old barns and buildings that were partially hidden during summer. The evergreens suddenly stand out against the softer landscape, and the morning sky seems bigger when I’m looking at it through bare branches. Even the light feels different.
Late-autumn sunlight has a softness to it. It stretches across fields at a lower angle and catches the last few leaves still hanging from the trees. On some mornings, frost covers the grass and disappears almost as quickly as it arrived. None of it is particularly dramatic. And maybe that’s why I like it.
When Winter Begins at the Worktable
Apparently, I’ve been carrying some of that quiet home with me because winter has started finding its way into my artwork.
The oranges and reds are still on my worktable, but now they’re sharing space with snowy whites, deep evergreens, winter skies, cardinals, and little scenes that make me think about cold mornings and warm houses. I’ve been painting on both canvas and slate, and I’m enjoying how different the same season can feel depending on the surface.
Slate has its own character. Its texture and natural edges already make a piece feel rustic before I ever touch a brush to it. Add a snowy landscape, an evergreen, a cardinal, or a little winter scene, and somehow it feels as though it belongs there.
Canvas gives me a different kind of freedom. I can build an entire landscape and play with the light, the sky, and all those subtle colors that exist inside something we casually call “white.”
Because snow, I’ve discovered through both photography and painting, is rarely just white. There are blues, grays, lavender shadows, golden reflections from the sun, and sometimes even the soft pink of a winter sunrise. Maybe winter isn’t quite as colorless as we think.
The Anticipation of the First Snow
No matter how many winters I’ve lived through, there is still something special about the first real snow. I’m not talking about February snow—the kind we’re tired of shoveling and driving through. I mean that first snowfall when the grass disappears, tree branches collect little ribbons of white, and the entire landscape seems to change within a few hours. Everything gets quieter. Even familiar places look new.
Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve started painting winter before it actually arrives. I’m already imagining those scenes. I’m thinking about cardinals against snowy branches, evergreens covered in fresh snow, and the warm glow of a little house surrounded by a winter landscape.
The world outside hasn’t turned white yet. But on my worktable, it’s getting close.
Creative Corner
Before winter arrives, try photographing the season we’re standing in right now.
Don’t wait for the perfect autumn tree or the first snowfall. Look for something beautiful in the landscape exactly as it is today.
Maybe it’s the shape of bare branches against the sky. Perhaps it’s the texture of dried grasses along a field or the last stubborn leaf still hanging from a tree. It might be an old barn you suddenly notice because the summer foliage isn’t hiding it anymore.
You don’t need a special camera. Your phone is enough.
The challenge is simply to find one thing you might normally walk past and really look at it.
Sometimes creativity begins when we stop waiting for the world to become more interesting.
Before You Go…
Soon enough, winter will arrive.
One morning I’ll look outside and discover that the landscape I’ve been photographing in browns, grays, and faded gold has disappeared beneath a blanket of white. I’ll probably grab my camera and eventually, some piece of that morning will find its way back to my worktable.
That’s the rhythm I’ve come to love—walking, noticing, photographing, creating, and then heading outside to begin all over again.
But I’m not quite ready to rush this season away.
There are still photographs waiting in these bare trees. There are still colors hiding in the quiet landscape. There are still late-autumn mornings worth noticing.
So before the world turns white, I’m going to keep looking. Because sometimes the seasons we hurry through are the ones asking us to slow down the most.
With gratitude, Nancy
Through My Lense
“Sometimes the seasons we hurry through are the ones asking us to slow down the most.”
Photography has taught me that beautiful doesn’t always mean colorful.
Some of my favorite moments behind the camera have happened when I’ve stopped looking for the obvious photograph.
An old building against a gray sky. A single tree standing in an empty field. The reflection of bare branches on quiet water. A deer stepping through the edge of the woods. An eagle perched high above a landscape that looks completely different than it did a month earlier.
These scenes aren’t trying very hard to impress us.
They’re simply there.
And when I slow down long enough to notice them, I often discover there’s something peaceful about this quieter landscape.
It feels like nature has taken a long breath.
