Fall Challenge

Each year, the Nature Group of the RA Photo Club organizes an outing called the Fall Challenge. This is a friendly competition where participants photograph at the same location for the day, for as long as they want, and afterwards submit their eight best photos that club members score. In 2016, the Fall Challenge was held at Foret La Blanche, which is a bit more than an hour's drive from Ottawa, and there were 20 or so participants. I hadn't participated in one of these challenges for a few years and was quite excited to go. So excited, I got up very early and was the second person on site before dawn so I could capture the sunrise. Even wearing a headlamp, it can be a bit tricky to navigate trails in the dark, but I was somewhat familiar with Foret La Blanche from several previous trips and had no difficulty. After capturing the sunrise over my selected lake, I spent the rest of the day till about 4 pm exploring the trails. By 4 pm I was good and tired and returned home. The most remarkable thing about the whole outing was the mushrooms. I've never seen such a profusion of mushrooms of every form imaginable! There were so many beautiful mushrooms that it became an effort of will to photograph something else​ so that I'd have some variety in the photos I submitted for scoring.