I remember when my now adult kids were at Primary School there was a particular song that would be sung in assembly at the beginning of each new academic year. The chorus went:
Here comes autumn bringing the mist and rain
Summer has gone for another year
Autumn is here again!
At home I would sing the song with the boys and add a little jokey, tearful “boo hoo!” at the end of the verse. The truth was I disliked the reality of “back to school” end of summer, with its shortening days and cooler temperatures. I hated the mist and rain!
In recent years I’ve got better at appreciating the qualities of each season and being in the present moment. I attribute a lot of this to the qigong practice I adopted during the covid pandemic, which helped me step forward and embrace change rather than hang on to the past.
Indeed, yesterday was misty and rainy. I took a shot out the kitchen window, the view that features in my Changing Views project. The cityscape horizon is obscured by the elements. I don’t particularly like the muted colours of this shot, but it does document that misty, rainy, late September moment:
I prefer the “jolly” view below, photographed earlier in September on a bright day, with the vivid freight train containers passing by. So am I deluded about my acceptance and appreciation of the changing seasons?
Recently I met up with Australian street photographer Lou Gilbert. We had both exhibited in the collectives Women In Street and Unexposed Collective but never actually met. We connected over coffee. On one occasion Lou brought me a really thoughtful gift; a book entitled Everyday Wonder by Sophie Howarth that combines photography that celebrate everyday moments with poetry and text, and is described as an anthology of essays, poems, photographs and creative practices for anyone looking to recover a sense of astonishment in ordinary things.
Towards the end of the book Sophie Haworth discusses something that has been preoccupying me of late, which is how we deal with difficult news and stories of disaster and destruction. She writes “If the world we long for is one rich in care and compassion, delight and diversity then it’s up to us to seek and magnify these things”. I think that my blog on looking for evidence of love and positivity in the streets of London is an example of this mindset.
For me the changing seasons are now an opportunity for observing random beauty and wonder in the street. Many people might dismiss a lone leaf seen in a metal bowl in a tunnel as just rubbish; but this struck me as a found still life, especially with the green and pink chocolate Smarties aligned on either side of the bowl.
The following images were shot over the last few weeks in London; since late August. The leaf fall seemed to start earlier this year; maybe because of the summer heatwaves and drier conditions.
Above, taken in late August during a London heatwave – my view at Green Park.
Next, a series of autumnal images shot locally to me in the Dartmouth Park, Parliament Hill and Kentish Town areas:
And finally, a couple of images shot on Highgate Road today, the last day of September 2025:
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