This autumn season was no turkey. I didn’t realize it until I looked through my photos, but this year has been one of my best – if not my overall finest – year for fall photos. I’m delighted by this discovery, and I can’t wait to share. Let’s start with a bunch of photos taken with my phone:

I was running an errand one morning and came across this stretch. I had to photoshop the chip in my windshield, but this is what my view looked like from the driver’s seat. Fantastic.

I did a fair bit of hiking this year, actually. This shot is from the path between Bismarck and Mandan, along the Missouri River.

Another quick hiking shot…this was a productive jaunt!

One thing which caught my eye this year was the light greens, or Kawasaki Green as I like to call it. Many years our autumn season is truncated by cold weather and wind, which doesn’t give the leaves time to progress through a full cycle of color. This year I saw a lot of Kawasaki Green, my favorite color, and I took advantage of the opportunity to photograph it.

There were other colors to choose from, too. This was along the bank of the Missouri River. I didn’t try to eat any of those, by the way.

The leaves had a lot of character this year. Thankfully I wasn’t too busy to experience autumn this year, although I still had to really work at getting out there. Thankfully it worked out well this time around.

This is right by the Grant Marsh Bridge, along that same walking path I mentioned earlier. I walked it both ways with a 4k gimbal camera shooting video, but I still stopped on occasion for a brief still shot.

When you’re on a hike with your beautiful sweetheart and she asks to lie in the tall grass and look up at the golden leaves, you do it. It was a wonderful experience. And while we’re thankfully past tick season, we did have a ladybug climb a stalk of grass between us. That was pretty cool. This was at Fort Stevenson State Park.

One of my favorite trees of this year is in an unfortunate location. There simply wasn’t an angle to avoid the parking lot, the street, and the power lines, so I didn’t bother trying. I just wanted to get that full load of brilliant orange leaves, a rarity around here. There are plenty of greens and even some reds, but to get a brilliant orange like this was a real treat.

I have many more photos to come. Those will be from my cameras, not my phone. Phone photos look great in ideal conditions, but upon close inspection they don’t really hold up to the quality of a large-sensor digital camera with quality lenses. That’s what I hope to deliver over the next few posts.