Fort Harrison State Park is nearby on the northeast side of Indianapolis and I stop by once in awhile to do some shooting.  A couple of friends had been there recently and got some magnificent shots in a stand of walnut trees, a stand large enough to be called a plantation.  I went over this morning to see if I could do as well.

All I found was row after row of trees with a lot of brush growing in between.   I got a few uninspired shots and then started looking at other possibilities.  I’ve noticed that, given a choice, I shoot small things rather than large ones.  My defense is that there are a lot more small things than there are large things and if you are in the woods the range of lighting on small things is a lot broader than it is for large things such as trees.  That’s my argument and I’m sticking with it.

There were back-lit possibilities all over the place.  Here is one:

That, by the way, is the bark of a walnut tree.  Two walnut trees in fact.

A problem with shooting small things, and large things for that matter, is the background.  It can be pretty difficult to get the ‘right’ angle for the subject while avoiding a distracting background.   The image above is OK in that regard – the background doesn’t overwhelm the subject.

But here is the problem in spades.

There are three leaves that attracted my attention but they are lost against the background.  This has happened so often that some time ago I took up removing the background altogether for some subjects. 

Exactly the same image as above but without the background.  Georgia O’Keefe made the comment

Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.  I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

I don’t do large images, I just remove the distracting part and leave the image relatively small.  Removing the background certainly calls attention to the subject.  Works for me.  Some day I really will make images of large subjects.  Just not today.