Out for a Walk
Flynn Marr 10 November 2025
I was surprised by the subtle beauty of the fall foliage. The colors were subdued but magnificent: yellows, browns, greens, blue and white.
Most of us are not famous photographers. We take our pictures and read camera guides and take photography courses just to learn how to take fun interesting pictures that people might find interesting. No more than that. Its not about art but rather it is about enjoying the world around us and trying to capture a little of the magic of being alive.
My wife and I live in a wonderful location on a bluff above an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. The hillside is a forested public park with a couple of kilometers of trails. I walk there often as part of my daily exercise. The trails are gentle and wide but the forest is largely untouched.
The other day I went for one of my walks. Earlier in the afternoon it had been raining and the ground and underbrush were damp. The sky was overcast with the odd patch of sunlight poking through.
I did not take a camera with me. I often find that I get tired of that thing around my neck and it is nice to simply relax and enjoy my walk. And every time I do I regret it. And as soon as I set out on the trail, I did again.
The approximately 2 kilometers of trails through the park are well kept. They would be an easy walk if it were not for the hills.
It was fall and most of the colored leaves were on the ground in a profusion of muted reds and yellows. They were wet which accentuated the color. The ferns were glorious. The damp was just what they loved and their green shimmered against the leaves that had fallen amongst their fronds. The moss on the trees was almost irridescent. I wanted my camera.
I read somewhere that the best camera is the one you have with you but all I had was my Samsung S20 smart phone. I was not going to back to the house so I decided my phone would have to serve. And all of the photographs in this post are from that walk taken with my phone’s camera.
There is no art here. These pictures are about the enjoyment of a walk that I don’t want to forget. The images are processed by the phone in a way that is beyond my control and output to JPEG files. While such files are usually very pretty they have very little latitude for post processing.
There is a major gully down the hillside carved by “Rainbow Creek” and it has a well maintained bridge across it.
The leaves had fallen into the ferns, the ivy and the green ground cover.
Along my path through the woods I could catch glimpses of the ocean and in places there were breaks in the foliage where the water could be seen. This is the Pacific Ocean but it is far from open water. What you see here is on a long inlet that reaches far inland.
The ferns loved the wet weather. They were everywhere.
There were several small creeks going to Rainbow Creek.
Some trees were covered in moss and ferns.
If I had one of my DSLR’s with me I would normally want my images in RAW files because they have the best dynamic range and color depth. Cell phone images are heavily processed by the phone and saved as JPEG files. These have a very little processing potential as you quickly find out when you try to work with them. They look good on the small screen of the phone but when you try to bring them to a larger screen, they can be dull and in need of help. And that is difficult.
All of these images have been enhanced as best I could to give the impression I had of the forest and trail during
Recently dead and discarded and soon to return to the earth, they are beautiful.
The ferns loved the wet weather. They were everywhere and everywhere covered with fallen laves.
There was a time this hillside was covered with a truly magnificent forest!
Even some of the second growth trees are sustantial.
my walk. After all, it is the impact of the experience that we are trying to capture. That is why we prefer RAW files: they give us greater ability to follow the feeling.
Anyway, that was my walk. The pictures are common and are certainly not art. But they are a reminder to me of how much I enjoy this world. I think all photographers enjoy the world and that is why they want to collect pieces of it to keep for later.
Through a break in the forest cover I could see the inlet which is actually a continuation for Vancouver’s harbour. The weather of the day is clearly visible in the sky. The sun was shining on the Alder trees on the far shore.
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