Happy Sunday! Patti leads this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge with a challenge to find beauty to unexpected places.

I am self-taught hobby photographer and I watch a lot of photography tutorials and videos on YouTube. Most of the photographer I am following on YouTube are in the UK because it seems photography is more popular in the UK and Europe than here in North America. Anyway, I often watch them hike into the mountain with their tripod and camera and would photograph farms and houses.

I am the type of person who would usually focus on the nature aspect of the hike. I would never photograph houses on a hike because one, I’m not interested in photographing houses and two, what am I suppose to do with photos of houses?

However, when I went up to the nearby mountains with my aunt yesterday on a mission to see autumn colors, I wound up looking for inspiration from elsewhere like this fire station that’s built in the recent years. I didn’t realize this until I imported this photo into the Lightroom that the roads and space behind the firehouse looked pretty empty and somehow, it reminded me of those videos when the UK photographer would take the audience along for their hike.

This is one of my favorite photos taken on the hike. The grass along the trail turned gold at this time of the year and it was quite striking. I quite enjoy taking photos like this because it allows my creativity to come through when I play with it in post-processing, turning an ordinary image into an extract art.

As much as I tried to focus on photographing autumn colors, there were other things that popped out at me, like this tree. There’s nothing special about this tree. There’s no trace of autumn colors. I have no further explanation than it drawn to me, shouted at me to “take the picture”. I think it’s more or less the same concept a person wants their photo taken, I guess trees like to seek attention, too.