Botany Photo of the Day

I agree with your assessment. And sometimes "bare hints" are all that's needed.

It's so extraordinary in the Adirondacks, that I know just what you mean. The photo is lovely.

Happy holiday! I for one am giving thanks (from Scotland) for this website -- a daily joy.

Having travelled through New Brunswick by train many many times, your photo brought back so many pleasant memories.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Beautiful. This reminds me of Fall trips into the 'cottage country' of Ontario, in and around Algonquin Park, when I was a child of about 10 or 12. At the peak of Fall colour, the hillsides were covered in vivid red, yellow, orange, green -- and I imagined that each entire tree had turned into a flower. I recall being on a lake in a small boat surrounded by brightly-coloured hills, and I imagined looking at hillsides covered with 'tree-flowers'.

I love the way the birch trunks stand out against the orange foliage in your picture.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian friends. . When I think of Canada, I always remember the brave Canadian diplomats who risked their own lives to help our embassy people escape from Iran in 1980. The US will never have a better friend in the world of nations than Canada.

yes, happy thanksgiving, i have just returned home from the interior where i was falling pine beetle dead ponderosa from my friends property. I have returned with a trailer of firewood to my family safe and sound and for this I am thankful. the fall colours are glorious. at the beginning of the weekend I went for a mountain bike ride in Kane valley x-country ski area, near Aspen grove B.C. The aspens there were gold and lime green and every hue in between. When I drove Hwy. 5a back to Kane valley two days later; with my buddy Mc Laren in tow, to do some more riding. The same aspens overnight had gone from brilliant colour to rusty brown. I had no idea the trees could change that quickly with only one night of sub zero weather! anyways, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone from scotland to Vancouver and all those giving thanks. Bruce.

If you find it difficult, then do not do it. Your photo is not very good. Use a polarizing lens. Do not push the season either. It is still a little early.

Mike, please. This site is not necessarily about 'perfect' pictures. Sometimes a glimpse is all one needs. The overall standard of photography here is excellent, but one of the main points of the site is to get glimpses of many plants and viewings of scenery that the less travelled among us cannot obtain. Thank you to everyone, and especially Daniel, for that.

Daniel, please ignore Mike's comment. It's a lovely and pleasant early-fall picture--especially for those of us in Southern California who seldom get to see the leaves change. The picture looks real, unlike some that use lenses that make the colors too bright! Thanks for sharing the photo.

The Swedish poet Karlsfeldt wrote: (Sorry for the poor translation)
"Now is the proud spring unfolded,
the spring that the weak call fall.
Now the moor is blooming red with heather
and the river's breast is white with lilies"

All the colors of the fall is a lift for the soul even if it so fleeting and blown away in the slightest breeze. Then come a few months when i fell to do like the bears and retreat to the hibernating den and emerge in the beginning of March. That is when the sun returns to Sweden and the days get longer again.
During that time I am eagerly looking forward to the picture of the day to brighten up my life. Thanks so much!

Thanks for taking the time, on a holiday, to post a lovely photo. So....do Canadians eat turkey on T'Giving too? ;-)
I love Bonnie Knutsen's comments....could not agree more! Actually, I love all of the comments, except the critical one, of course. Always so much fun to read the comments and feedback, great group!

happy thanksgiveing from florida usa
i am so thankful for botony a day
a big thank you to daniel

oh the motionless branches of some trees
autum berries hung like clusters of coral beads
as in those fabled orchards where the fruits
were jewls charles dickens

i stood on top of mount washington and watched
the glorys of colors unfold beneath me bon jour

Mike - would you accept an invitation into a stranger's home, take the offered comfy place to sit and then tell the person providing you with hospitality that their house is ugly?

There is a time and a place for artistic criticism and you chose the wrong time and place.

This same thing is happening in Western Massachusetts and across into Lower Vermont. We seem to be lacking the red colous this year. The few bright organe and red colours fell to the ground in the rains we had last week. Each Autumn is different and one came always find one beautiful tree.
Thank you,
Margaret-Rae

Well put, Eric in SF.
What comes to mind is 'looking the gift-horse in the mouth'.
Not only are these pages a gift, but the primary point is botany, not photographic critique (although photography is a secondary interest for many of us).

However, I fear that this kind of sensitivity and judgement cannot be taught, not easily, anyway. The web provides limitless opportunities for people to make negative comments, if that's what they're looking to do.

Thanks, Daniel, for taking time on a Thanksgiving holiday to remind us of the beauty of the natural world.

Daniel,

You could try creating "panoramas" by stitching photos together with software after the fact. This kind of approach used to be create pretty ugly looking results, but the software has improved a lot. Photoshop CS4 has an excellent algorithm for merging photos, which accessible from the File > Automate > Photomerge menu item.

I for one learn by doing so I always vote for that. What I love about the photo is how the composition passes in three distinct waves grounded in the trees, dissolving into cloud vapor and resolving to blue sky. I figure that no picture can truly relate the experience of being surrounded and towered over by brilliant fall color. Happy Thanksgiving!

One day I am going to get there, one day I am going to get there , one day I am going to get there.

Do you think if i say it loud enough and often enough, I will someday be able to afford a trip to see your Fall season for real?

I can not imagine the immensity of the colour and scale of the landscape.

It's overwhelming isn't it?

Daniel, I entirely understand your comment on the magnitude of the scenery. I drove through the Eastern Townships in Quebec on the weekend, my mouth agape at the astoundingly beautiful panorama of sweeping hills cloaked in deep yellows, rust, and orange, interspersed with the deep green of soaring pines. Just lovely...as is your photo.

Once in the fall from the window of an airplane returning from Europe, I could not believe my eyes. We in the northeast are so privileged. I would not want to live anywhere else.

Daniel, I enjoy each and every picture I get from BPOTD. Some are pretty, some are amazing, some are, meh, neither here nor there necessarily, but I ENJOY each and every one of them and I thank you and your peeps for sharing this free, welcomed, stress-free (except for negative comments) site. Thank you for what you give us.

One thing i'm sure you captured the scene from a good elevation making it a perfect picture.Thanks for sharing.

For panoramas, try Hugin Panorama photo stitcher. It's open-source, free software and does a great job!

Just remember to rotate the camera around its focal point, not its center of mass for panoramas with a large depth of field (otherwise, you get nasty parallax errors):

http://www.techimo.com/photo/showphoto.php/photo/9727/cat/all/ppuser/265