A Day-by-Day Chronicle of Autumn, as Told by My Favorite Tree

An Inconspicuous Consumption photo project.

I go for an hour-long bike ride in Prospect Park — Brooklyn’s version of Central Park — nearly every day. It’s a particularly nice ride this time of year, as the dozens of trees along the bike loop provide a gorgeous autumn foilage tour.

I’m particularly fond of one tree — a magnificent sugar maple (New York’s official state tree, don’tcha know) situated in the park’s southeastern quadrant. That’s it in the photo shown above — I think of it as “my tree,” and I suspect I’m not the only one who feels that way. Each year it explodes with a spectacular array of colors that feel like the very definition of autumnal.

I’ve been doing my daily bike ride for over 25 years now, and I’ve often thought it would be good to create a day-by-day photo chronicle of my tree’s changing colors. The thing is, I usually leave my phone at home when I go for my bike ride (I like to have a little bit of time each day when I’m not findable or internet-able), so I always forget to start photographing the tree until it’s already pretty far along in its color transition.

This year, though, I remembered. I photographed the tree on Oct. 15, when its green leaves began showing a few hints of red and orange, and then kept photographing it each successive day¹ through yesterday, Oct. 31, by which time most of the leaves had fallen away and the tree was nearly bare.

We didn’t have a single rainy or even overcast day during the period when I was photographing the tree, which made for really good pics (although it’s bad for other reasons). I took each photo from the same spot but not always at the same time of day, so the lighting and shadows vary a bit. Here’s a video showing the tree’s day-by-day progression: