It began as a moment of pause. The kind that asks for nothing but attention. I sat on the porch, pipe in hand, listening as the soft rain whispered its way through the trees. Each drop seemed to find its place, tracing invisible paths along the branches until a gust of wind released it all in a sudden, joyous cascade. The marble walk before me became a shallow pond, a mirror to the gray sky. Scattered across it were the fallen leaves — some resting flat, others curled in on themselves — their rust and amber hues blooming against the pale stone.
I didn’t intend to take a picture. It was the kind of beauty that belongs to stillness, not spectacle. But as the rain softened and the smoke from my pipe drifted forward, I noticed how the marble, water, and sky folded into one another, how each surface reflected the other until none of them could be easily separated. It felt like a truth too fragile to last, and so I lifted my camera to bear witness.
In that instant, I wasn’t composing so much as joining the scene. The photograph revealed itself: a quiet balance between what endures and what fades. The marble was cool and permanent, the leaves were temporary, and I was somewhere between them, breathing smoke into the rain. The act of photographing became less about capturing and more about participating in the rhythm of impermanence.
As I looked later at the image — leaves adrift, colors muted by the gray sky — I was reminded of Whistler’s nocturnes, where atmosphere takes precedence over form; of Monet’s water lilies, where reflection blurs the boundaries between air and earth; and of Hiroshige’s rain scenes, where the world is both motion and stillness at once. My photograph, though far humbler, shares something of their intent. It is not about objects, but about the space between them. The space that elusive tension where time and perception meet.
The composition rests on accident and grace. The leaves fall where they must; the rain gathers where it will. I am there only to notice, only to see how beauty organizes itself without my control. It is a study in what the Japanese call wabi-sabi, the art of imperfect transience. Every element — leaf, stone, drop, breath — belongs precisely because it will not last.
Sitting there, pipe in hand, I felt an uncommon peace. The smoke curled upward, pale and temporary, before dissolving into the same damp air that carried the scent of earth and rain. In that small act — breathing in, exhaling, watching the smoke disappear — I found myself mirrored in the scene before me. The photograph, when I look at it now, is not just of marble and leaves; it is of that feeling, that awareness, that moment when I too became part of the composition.
I call it Autumnal Mirror because that is what it reflects. It reflects not only the sky upon stone, but the quiet recognition that everything, myself included, belongs to the same fleeting beauty. For a few minutes, I sat content to simply be: rain above, marble below, smoke between. A man, a moment, and the soft applause of water finding its way home.