Rangefinder Magazine
November 2001/Features

When The Swamp Maples Turn by Jane Wingate
Autumn in New Hampshire: Not Just Any Rubbernecking Leaf-peeper

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At summer’s end here in New Hampshire, as we clean up our vegetable gardens, see that there’s enough wood for the winter, and batten down the hatches, we keep one eye on the maples.

Sometime in September—usually toward the end of the month—the word goes out: “The swamp maples are turning!” Or sometimes it goes, “The swamp maples are up!” (“Up” means up in color.) Photographers native to this state, knowing how brief the season is, are ready for the autumn shoot, having checked the gear and laid in film weeks before the maples turn.

As the season cranks up, so do the foliage reports (given along with the weather forecasts) that keep abreast of the progress of the colors in different areas of the state. After all, as one of our weather forecasters enthused, the two places on earth that claim the best autumn color are China and New Hampshire.

Then the tourists arrive, gawking left and right, cruising slowly up the busy highways, sometimes getting lost on back roads, the butt of mild scorn of the locals who roll their eyes and gripe about getting stuck behind a slow-moving carload of rubbernecking leaf-peepers. As a photographer who has seldom missed a New Hampshire autumn, I am mostly interested in the show in my own backyard. Here in the southern part of the state, far from the madding crowds that flock to the White Mountains to see the foliage, we have color as good as anywhere else. Best of all, what we have here in southern New Hampshire are the swamps.
To us swamp-lovers, “swamp” is a loose term used to name several types of bodies of water.

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A swamp may be more pond-like than not, perhaps full of snags—dead trees that indicate former low-lying woods. Usually such a swamp is the work of beavers who flooded land by damming up a brook. “Swamp” can also describe other boggy, soggy, grassy wetlands in various stages of ecological evolution.

Whatever the character of a swamp, the photographer can be sure to find the best, earliest color along its edges, where the maples—the “swamp” maples—turn first. Every location has its special requirements. At swamp-side, where the going can be rough, rugged, reasonably waterproof boots are a must. A large plastic trash bag is useful to protect your gear from the soggy ground when you set up to shoot. And because an autumn day in northern New England can begin with a frosty dawn and end with a balmy afternoon, it’s a good idea to dress in layers. An added, welcome bonus is a thermos of tea or coffee for that lull that comes after the hard work of the early-morning shoot.

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Then there is the nagging dilemma: what to take for gear? Though I am always scheming to lighten my load, I know if I leave a lens behind, that lens will be the very one I might need to capture an image just the way I want. So, along with my Nikon F3, I usually take my 35–105mm (my favorite landscape lens; the first three of these photos were shot with it), my 80–200mm, and my 300mm with its 1.4X tele-converter, and, in case I should want to do close-up work, my 105mm micro. These lenses, plus more Velvia than I anticipate using, and my rugged 3021 Bogen tripod with an Arca Swiss ball head, usually meet all demands of my swamp shoots.

Captions:

1. In a pond created by beavers, these three silvery snags, the frosty foreground grasses, the mist rising off the water and the bright splashes of swamp maples on the far shore combine happily to illustrate that there is no more magical time at water’s edge than just before dawn.

2. Every swamp has its own character, its own mood. Taken just before dawn, the dark water and the deep, rich colors of the trees and grasses give this image the look of a rich tapestry.

3. What caught my eye here was the way the leaves reflected in the water looked like bits of bright stained glass. For this shot, I used my 80–200mm lens, stabilized on a Kirk Enterprises mount made especially for that lens.

4. Sooner or later, the photographer points the camera downward to close in on a handful of leaves. The temptation is irresistible, and it is a challenge to get a leaf close-up that isn’t a cliche. This clutch of rosy-colored leaves was taken with my 105mm lens on a tripod half in, half out of a little leaf-clogged brook flowing out of a swamp.

5. This old maple, its many rugged branches putting on a show all by themselves, is growing right atop a beaver dam that holds in a 14-acre pond where, many years ago, there was only a wet meadow with a small brook running through. When I took this just after dawn, thin clouds had moved in, further saturating the colors of the leaves.

6. For this late-afternoon shot of tree trunks and foliage on a distant shore, I used my 300mm lens and the 1.4X tele-converter, a perfect combination for the tight composition I was after.

Freelance writer and photographer Jane Wingate is based in Farmington, NH. She can be reached at her web site: www.janewingate.com.