Yes, fall has reached into the pothole, the Archbald Pothole State Park. A gloomy windswept day offered cool, even lighting for rock outcroppings and autumn colors.

The pothole does not offer the manicured woodlands favored by Nigel Danson, who lurks by preference among centuried oaks and mature silver birches. Our woodlands are mostly quite recent growth: a century ago the pothole was open mining land. We have fine rock outcroppings, but they tend to be hidden behind a riot of crowding young trees (figure 1). It takes some luck and effort to find vistas that lend themselves to photographic compositions.

The outcroppings are sometimes striking! But the largest ones have been polished by the edge of the Laurentide ice sheet (figure 2).

Here and there the outcrops exhibit a thin bedding texture (figure 3).

As one walks into the park trail from the parking lot there is a striking outcropping of rock which was decked with golden fireworks in the foreground yesterday.

The exposed ridge in the park gets winds which whisk away the autumn leaves fast. Here, foregrounded against barren trunks, is a trifecta of autumn color stubbornly hanging on: yellow-orange-red (figure 5).

The exposure was pretty short in figure 6, mostly stopping the blowing leaves as a storm blew in. The winds whistled through the branches.

And lastly, “loner” here is hanging on to its red leaves while all around have lost theirs.
Nikon Z 7ii with Nikkor Z 24-200 mm f/4-6.3 lens.
Figure 1: 48 mm, f/8, ISO 640, 1/60.
Figure 2: 24 mm, f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/30.
Figure 3: 200 mm, f/8, ISO 1250, 1/60.
Figure 4: 50 mm, f/8, ISO 640, 1/80.
Figure 5: 49 mm, f/8, ISO 640, 1/200.
Figure 6: 34 mm, f/8, ISO 640, 1/200.
Figure 7: 77 mm, f/6, ISO 640, 1/80.
All cleaned up with DxO; edited with Luminar AI.