Capturing Autumn Through the Lens of Brett Kosmider

Maples reach their peak along Waters End Road. Photo by Brett Kosmider.

No season in Door County ushers in change that’s more palpable than autumn. Hot, humid air gives way to crisp, dry breezes. The lushness of summer surrenders to blazing fall foliage. Beaches go quiet, and days get shorter.

Photographing a Door County autumn can be described as “hurry up and wait.” With the jet stream plunging south from Canada — and bringing low-pressure systems and their related soggy, windy weather with it — being in the right place at the right time becomes a greater challenge in the fall.

Every day in October, I check the weather almost hourly. It’s part science and part intuition, this mix of chance and process that makes my pursuit so exciting. It’s not the perfectly clear and calm moments that make the most stunning photographs, although a crisp, clear golden hour sure helps to make a subject pop. Instead, the best photographs are most often made on the edge of daylight, or just before storm clouds roll in or after the snow squall passes. Those are moments that make you feel alive.

More than the stunning autumnal colors, it’s the mercurial moods of the season that are my true muse at this time of year. Sometimes I get lucky. Some years I get rained out.

Photos by Brett Kosmider.

The Hotz Trail loops on the narrow stretch of land between Europe Bay and inland Europe Lake and is a popular fall hiking spot for Northern Door residents.

Tamaracks are unusual conifers that lose their needles every fall, leading many to think the trees are dying along the peninsula’s roadsides. The name for the species in the Algonquian language is “akemantak,” which  means “wood used for snowshoes.”

Fall means apples in Door County. The crew at Seaquist Orchards hand-harvests more than 30 varieties of apples from orchards throughout the northern peninsula every year.

Looking down the length of Detroit Island from Rabbit Point — so named because it had once become infested with rabbits. The privately owned island sits at the entrance to Detroit Harbor and can be seen from aboard the Washington Island Ferry.

Ephraim is picturesque any time of year, but that’s especially true when the white buildings nestled below the bluff pop amid the autumn colors.

The change of season is especially poignant as the leaves fall on the headstones of Blossomberg Cemetery in Peninsula State Park. Those stones feature the names of some of the county’s most influential residents.

Little Lake on Washington Island is part of a 32-acre Door County Land Trust preserve that includes 1.25 miles of hiking trails and 5,500 feet of Lake Michigan and Little Lake shoreline.