The sun is lower now. The light has become softer, warmer, almost fragile. A slight haze hangs over the landscape, catching the last rays of the evening and turning an ordinary field into something almost dreamlike.
And then there is the scene itself.
A bicycle. A woman walking beside it. And, unexpectedly, a horse following alongside.
There is something wonderfully unusual about it, yet nothing about the moment seems staged. They simply pass through the landscape together, framed by the trees and illuminated by the low evening sun.
Sometimes everything comes together for just a few seconds: the light, the atmosphere, an unexpected scene and someone who happens to notice it.
Perhaps that is what makes photographs like this special. They don't need a spectacular place or a carefully arranged subject.
I took this photograph in 2002. More than two decades later, what draws me back to it isn't only the unusual encounter. It is that particular late-summer evening light and the subtle feeling that the season is beginning to change.
Summer is still there.
But autumn is already waiting.