Lynkos

Between summer and autumn

Sarah — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 06:47:41 +0000

Between summer and autumn

Here in the foothills of the Apennines in central Italy, the seasons are teetering along a tightrope stretched between summer and autumn. Blue skies and bare arms in the sun during the day alternate with chill shivery nights. The rhythmic chirping of the crickets has given way to the roar of the rutting red deer stags on the mountain slopes the other side of the valley. Then silence. The sun is low on the horizon, the shadows grow longer. We all know it’s over, and rightly so. But autumn is reluctant to take over. It hides away in the rare morning mists, peeks through a shimmering curtain of vibrant rose hips, briefly flaunts a gaudy display of sycamore leaves, then steps back without protest as a sprinkling of tired butterflies flit raggedly among a handful of unseasonal second flowerings.
Some ten days or so ago, it almost seemed as though autumn had finally found its courage. Two days of uninterrupted mist and rain and the leaves on the woodland floor no longer crunched underfoot.

Drop by drop, the last of the ivy-leaved cyclamen flowers succumbed and a few, a very few, fungi finally emerged, some so small they were almost invisible, sprouting in crevices in the bark, amongst the revigorated moss and lichen.

Others were easier to spot and some even brought their own “tears”.

Pushing delicately through the long grass in a clearing without wanting to make a fuss, the umbrella inkcaps were so fragile, they seemed to wither and shrink faster than I could photograph them.

The lichen and moss on the old tree stumps took on a vibrant green.

Miniature jungles populated by the tiniest of woodland creatures.

And how to resist playing with the reflections and fallen leaves gathered in the water-filled hollows of old oak trunks, populated by strange beetle larvae, half concealed under a profusion of silver bubbles and impossible to photograph.

Adapted from an article first published in The 617 Club.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

This is what it’s about

Sarah — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 07:30:28 +0000

This is what it's all about

Petals have fallen, stamens have withered. It’s all over we say as everything slowly slides into chromatic monotony. Much ado about nothing. Wait. Nothing? Well, no, not really. Actually this is exactly what it was all about. All that photosynthesising, all those flashy colours, floral flattery. Come here pretty pollinator… just for you, a gift of nectar, a nibble of a fragrant flower. And in return, could you just do me a favour… a few grains of pollen, from here to there?

So this is where it all ends up, all that effort, all that energy. Fertility. Ready to blow away in the wind… or get caught in the fur of a passing animal (me included), eaten, whatever imaginative way evolution has engineered to pass from one generation to another (and of course, evolution never actually imagined anything, but please allow me a touch of autumnal anthropomorphism).

As so often in nature, it’s difficult to decide. Is it an end or a beginning. It’s all sort of mixed up in there somewhere.

Autumn gets me like this sometimes. All those mellow mists and fruitfulness (or was it the other way round?), dark evenings and cold feet. But there’s chestnuts and vino novello, and walnut cake and coffee, and coffee and walnut cake. Well, there’s always coffee. And marmite.

And the leaves start to fall. Slowly. One at a time, it’s early days.

Just watching the seasons go by. May the light be kind to you all.

Adapted from an article first published in The 617 Club.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

Tough to process

Sarah — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:49:55 +0000

Tough to process

Yesterday I took my camera and my courage firmly in both hands and decided to explore a relatively unknown part of my local village (in the foothills of the central Italian Apennines). The conditions were not great, bright blue sky and really contrasty, but my main aim was simply to try and overcome my shyness, in the hopes that just walking around with my camera would help boost my self-confidence, literally step by step. I have a very long way to go. I did though come back with a few images that seemed worth processing… but there “casca l’asino” as they say in Italian (literally, “the donkey falls down”, poor thing, roughly translatable as “that’s where the problems begin”). Whereas with my landscape or nature images, processing flows relatively easily from my “vision” to my fingertips, I find that with my street images, I flounder. I just don’t know where to begin.
My instinct is to convert them immediately to B&W and that may well be the best solution in many, if not most, cases.

But I feel that before going down that route, I need first to understand better how colour works (or doesn’t) in what is for me a very new genre, but one I’m ever more enthusiastic to explore.
Another of my goals is to be less obsessed with perfection (not that I’ve ever got anywhere near it) and be more spontaneous, in an attempt to look at my everyday surroundings with the eyes of someone from another place, or even another time. Always keeping in mind that one person’s familiar and “boring” may well be another person’s novel and interesting.
I started from the main street…

… before turning down one of the numerous side streets where, to use a clichéd but apt expression, time seems to have stood still. More or less.

In this part of the village, there are still a lot of houses in need of renovation and I did take quite a few images of semi-ruins, but the light wasn’t right and I ended up binning most of them. I’ll be going back.

I had been hoping to include more people in my shots, but actually the streets were pretty deserted, much less stressful, but not ideal for my self-confidence building. In the end, the only living creature I ended up photographing was this “guard dog”, an image snatched in passing before his barking alerted half the neighbourhood to my presence.

Reflecting on my experience, I believe that a small village may well be one of the most difficult contexts possible for a shy street photographer. I’m pretty sure that a more extrovert approach could yield some amazing images of some of the local characters who would probably be all too willing to oblige, but I fear that is just not me… at least not in the here and now. I yearn for the relative anonymity of a big city, but I will be persisting. You never know.

Adapted from an article first published in The 617 Club.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

Think pink

Sarah — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:17:12 +0000

Think pink

I used to adore walking in the woods in autumn, that earthy, sensual smell of damp leaf mould, the tones that grow warmer as the air grows colder… and of course the fungi in their myriad of colours and shapes. Why am I writing in the past tense? Because for the last decade or so, I’ve lived in a part of Italy determined to leapfrog autumn, going straight from arid dry summers to bitterly cold winters, separated by nothing but a fragmented display of autumn colours towards late October, if the wind doesn’t strip the leaves first.

It does, of course, have its good points, but at this time of year I really miss the fungi hunting that, in milder climes, used to keep me occupied at least until December. But there are consolations, such as the blossoming of one of my iconic flowers, the ivy-leaved cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium), its delicate pink blossoms bursting up through the crunchy leaves and sun-dried moss on the desiccated woodland floor.

And I wasn’t alone in revelling in the glorious autumn sunshine. Not sure about the ID, but possibly the rufous grasshopper (Gomphocerippus rufus).

Adapted from an article first published in The 617 Club.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

Empty skies

Sarah — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:42:22 +0000

Empty skies

The skies are emptying, species after species, flock after flock. The swifts were the first to go in late July, followed by the bee eaters, small groups at a time, so high up they’d have gone unnoticed were it not for their distinctive warbling cry. The swallows left for Africa three weeks ago. One day they were there, the next day they weren’t. Now all that remain are the house martins. They pass overhead small groups at a time, some stay the night, roosting in trees or under eaves, a brief rest before continuing their journey.

A pause to put the feathers straight, see to a little personal hygiene.

Others arrive with the wind, briefly filling the sky as they whirl and turn against the cloud.

Then they’re gone. The empty skies, the silence… they’ll take some getting used to. It’s always been that way, a moment of melancholy. I remember as a child in the English countryside, lying with the stubble pricking my back, counting them as they passed overhead and wishing oh so hard that I could just take flight and go with them. Far away. South. And I suppose in a way I have. Italy is not Africa, but there are worse places to wait, counting the days until the skies fill again.

Adapted from an article first published in The 617 Club.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

Not with a bang but a whimper

Sarah — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:03:12 +0000

Not with a bang but a whimper

This somewhat hysterical summer has been characterised by endless days, weeks, of pitiless sun, broken only by ferocious almost tropical late-afternoon storms with crazily strong winds, thunder and lightening, but often no more than a couple of drops of desperately needed rain. The result has been a sort of colourless pseudo-autumn, with the ground strewn with twigs and half-bleached leaves prematurely torn from their branches by the gales. Definitely not a good time to visit the woods. What this will mean for the “real” autumn which here reaches its best in late October/November, only time will tell.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

Bye bye summer

Sarah — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 09:54:50 +0000

Bye bye summer

Two days ago, it rained. Not a passing storm, all show and spectacle for an hour, maybe two, then the dampness evaporates almost before the clouds have dissolved and by the next morning, the parched ground has sucked up every last remaining drop. No, this time it was for real. Genuine clouds and rain that hung around long enough to form puddles. And mud. I never thought I’d be so happy to see mud. The temperature dropped from the low to mid 30°C to a chilly 17°C and I found myself hunting around for a pair of socks. Of course, as everyone knows, one pair of socks doesn’t make autumn. But actually, it sort of does. Because since then, everything has changed. Cooler, yes, but there’s something different about the air, and the light glows rather than shimmers. It simply isn’t summer anymore.
While slipping into a warm pair of socks isn’t necessarily a universally recognised sign of approaching autumn, there are some late-flowering species of plant which most definitely are. In the last week or so, my central Apennine hill meadows have turned bright yellow with a massive blossoming of yellow bartsia (Odontites luteus).

Now I’d love to claim that this crooked horizon was an intentional style choice (ISC for short). But actually it was because I had become an eagerly-awaited breakfast and lunch opportunity for diverse swarms of blood-thirsty (literally) insects who mistakenly took my immobility as a sign of compliance. The need for evasive action was more important than a level horizon. Such is life.

Then there is the delightfully scented winter savory (Satureja montana)…

… and the delicately coloured but not so delicately named leadwort (Plumbago europaea).

But apart from these wondrous displays of late summer colour, my meadows are showing their age. Everything is a bit dusty, a touch shabby, a tad untidy and worn (I know the feeling).

The sun is lower now, the shadows longer.

Black on white, white on black. Looking out or looking in.

Far or near. Perspective and point of view.

There is less buzzing, less flitting. Hard to resist a touch of melancholy, knowing that soon my meadows will be silent and empty. But it’s as it should be, as it must be. These creatures have done their bit. Genes have been transmitted, the next generation is assured.

So yes, summer 2026 is officially over, at least in my books. It’s not been the easiest of times, but we (me and them) have survived. Now all that remains is to find a find a nice warm cranny somewhere to weather out the winter chills and long dark nights.

Oh yes… and of course to offer my sincere thanks to whoever invented socks. Cold feet. Just can’t abide them. So from him and me, bye for now

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

The blessings of burst mode

Sarah — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:50:09 +0000

The blessings of burst mode

Motivation is indeed hard to come by at the moment. It’s not so much the heat, that I can cope with, as the sheer amount of people and cars (above all cars) I have to contend with just to reach my habitual photo hunting grounds. Then there’s the noise, the grubbiness of it all. OK whinge over, but my reluctance to throw myself into the indecorous fray of summer tourism in our usually peaceful hilltop village explains why I was sitting sulkily on my terrace this morning, trying to find that elusive motivation to shoulder my camera bag and get out and about. I didn’t. Instead, the motivation came to me in the shape of a delightful family of swallows that decided to have breakfast a few feet from where I was sitting. That and burst mode did the rest.

Adapted from an article first published in The 617 Club.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

Fifty shades of black

Sarah — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 05:52:01 +0000

Fifty shades of black

This is not the image I’d like to be posting, but for many of us in the northern hemisphere, our memories of Summer 2026 will forever be tinged with the sombre shades of black and accompanied by the acrid smell of wood smoke. It seems right that we don’t forget. A couple of days ago, fire broke out on the outskirts of our village in the foothills of the Italian Apennines. It was no big deal, just a small patch of wasteland, dry vegetation, some dogrose and blackthorn scrub. Given the situation in other parts of the world, I hardly like to mention it. But it makes you think. We were lucky. There was virtually no wind, the fire fighters were notified almost immediately and they managed to put it out before it spread to the adjacent trees, then from there, a small leap to the first houses in the village and some cars parked nearby. As I said, we were lucky. But when I walk past, I can’t ignore that acrid smell and it gives me the shivers. Sometimes our planet as we know it seems such a fragile place.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.

Saved by a leaf

Sarah — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:12:09 +0000

Saved by a leaf

I admit it, it’s a bit of a grumpy time for me right now. Too little sleep perhaps… window open for the heat, neighbour’s dog barking until the small hours, an impromptu get-together on the steps outside my window at two in the morning, you know the thing. Too many people in places I usually go for solitude. Too many cars. Above all too many cars, narrow village streets designed for feet or hooves turned into improvised car parks. Too much, too many, too fast. It’s not my world. Anyway, that’s not why you’re here of course, I just wanted to explain my state of mind when I went on my customary photo-walk yesterday morning. Inspiration nil, creativity nada. So there I was, sitting under a tree having a cantankerous conversation with a dried-up leaf lying there on a stone beside me minding its own business… well actually, it was pretty one-sided. Shrivelled-up leaves aren’t known for being great conversationalists, being dead and all that.

Then suddenly I stopped in mid whinge. Hang on (I thought), the curve of those veins actually looks pretty neat, and what about that hole, and just look at how the light catches those spiky bits, and… Well, before I knew it, there I was totally engrossed in exploring a withered leaf that all of a sudden had become the epicentre of my universe.

The results are certainly not going to win me any of the competitions I wouldn’t enter anyway, but viewing them together they seem to have something to say. If only that you need to let go (by “you”, I obviously mean “I”). You can’t force inspiration, you can’t oblige creativity to just appear as if from a genie’s bottle. Or at least, I can’t. But it never hurts to just get out there and open up to what’s around. So that’s what I’m about to do, while “they” are still yawning and wondering whether to have a second cup of coffee. Over and out. Che la luce sia con voi.

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.