Monthly Archives: October 2010

More autumn leaves

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We had a lot of wind the other day (close to tornado conditions) and a good many leaves came down.  The hickory and some of the maple trees are nearly bare but the oak and sycamore leaves are hanging on.

Here are some leaf images from this autumn I haven’t used yet in these posts.


No texture there except what was in the leaf which was suspended on a thread from a spider’s web.  Unfortunately the thread is not visible.


More surface tension.  Expect to see more of these, I find them fascinating.


I was supposed to be photographing something else when I saw this.  Sometimes I’m grateful for a limited attention span.


This is one of my (recent) favorites.  It is a straight photograph superimposed on the output of a leaf scanned in a flat bed scanner.

Here are a couple more leaves that I ran through the flat bed scanner.  Notice they are three dimensional; the lid of the scanner was left up so they didn’t get flattened.  This is the leaf (a day later) that was scanned and used as the background in the image above.


I especially like the three dimensionality.


And here is one final image.  This started out as a standard digital photograph and textures were added.

Added texture

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I’ve been impressed with how adding texture to an image can, in some cases, make it more interesting.  I had taken this picture a couple of weeks ago but didn’t use it in a post because others at the time were more interesting:

I like the image well enough, it just doesn’t seem to have the umph I would want.  I had been looking at what are called ‘grunge’ textures on the web and decided to download a few and try them.  The one in this case was done by Jerry Jones. I added it to the image and this is what resulted.


It adds an atmosphere that I can’t quite define but what need is there to do that since we can all see it?

I began doing my own textures, largely by shooting scenes that seem to lend themselves to it.  Here’s the first one I tried:


I think this is going to work as long as I don’t push it too far.  Here are a couple I did today:



I would be interested in hearing what you think of this.  Does it add interest?

It’s all in how you look at it

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I’ve been shooting reflections in water for a long time and this autumn has been no exception.  Here’s a very typical shot:

Nothing especially interesting about that but look what happens when I turn it upside down:


Now it starts to take on a different meaning.  It is as if we are looking at a scene through wavy glass.


I especially like that one.

And they can take on an abstract quality:


They can be interesting when rotated a quarter turn:


I purposely do not look for shapes in clouds.  My mother used to look for faces and animals but I just want to appreciate the shape without labeling it.  But here is an exception.  This just looks like someone pushing against something that doesn’t want to move:


And finally, one of the charms of a reflection is seeing it disturbed:


Hard to get tired of doing this.

Mostly weeds

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I’ve been getting closer and closer to the subject recently.  This one might be good for Halloween.


I’ve noticed that weeds, when you view them from some distance, look like weeds.  But when you get close to them they don’t seem to be so much weeds as miniature beauties of some unknown variety.


They have flowering parts and graceful, colorful leaves.


Weeds are really smart.  They often feature flight-worthy mechanisms to transport the seeds away from the mother plant.  Something like sending a kid off to college (or does the kid escape to college?)


Do they look to you as if they are dancing?

This next one is titled ‘Echo’.


And finally here is what started this whole venture into looking closely at weeds a few days ago.


I think weeds are God’s way of keeping us in our place.  All we have to do is look at them to see they have standing too.

Autumn evening

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I was thinking about going out to shoot this morning but then I put it off until afternoon.  That didn’t work either so I went out to the backyard this evening.  I think it was worth the wait.


We’ll call this plant ‘flowering-whatever-it-is-2.  I don’t know what it is but I like it, especially backlit.

Here’s another shot from the same plant which some would call a weed.


According to the definition ‘a weed is a plant growing in the wrong place’ this is not a weed.


Probably pretty insect-resistant too.

Now here is a more ‘legitimate’ plant.  This is an American Beech tree.  We’ve enjoyed this tree for 30 years.  It is beautiful in all seasons and when a light rain falls on its leaves, it is musical.


And it has a dazzling array of fall colors.


Hard to beat that around here.

More leaves – it’s autumn

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It’s difficult to avoid leaves when out with a camera this time of year.  They’ve received little attention while living and now that they aren’t, they seem to find their way in front of the camera whatever the original motivation might have been.


Fascinating though, aren’t they?


Theses blades of grass (also leaves in my book) look as if they were perfectly still.  They weren’t.  The wind was blowing as if a front were coming through.


For all the wind, the leaves in the water were in a protected area and a slower shutter speed sufficed.


Weeds.  Appealing weeds.


The teasel has done it’s biological job, farewell.

Morning light

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The morning light was good today and who was I to waste it?

There is a bit of a ‘once upon a time’ element to this image.  It is a composite of five images taken at different exposures (high dynamic range or HDR).  I like to use that technique with good light in the autumn.

I’m still working with leaves caught in the chain link fence that keeps our dogs in the backyard and not wandering the neighborhood.


It says something to me about the light of God shining through us even in difficult circumstances.  Or I just like back-lighting.  Take your pick.

The morning light caught just a little of the flowering whatever-it-is.


A few more minutes and it just looked like weeds.


It can be rewarding to look up sometimes.

These few precious days, these few precious days.

Evening shoot

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I was out briefly this evening to shoot for just a little bit.  The light was too good to pass up.


I spotted this leaf caught up in a flowering what-ever-it-is late this afternoon and thought the evening light would be good.  It was.

Our friend Robin wanted to make my wife Ellie a birthday cake based on a quilting theme since Ellie is an avid quilter.  She outdid herself:


It’s every bit as good tasting as it looks.

Smorgasbord day

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Today I went out without any specific focus, in fact I was trying to avoid any preconceived notions of what I would shoot.


It’s a day in autumn so color would be part of it.

Not a day to be hung up on any particular theme except autumn.


That’s enough of the puns, visual and otherwise.


I wondered around a patch of milkweed;  they are coming along.


I used to be in R&D at AT&T and then at Lucent Technologies.  In other words, the telephone business.  When I first saw these teasels with the spider web connecting them, it seemed to represent a communications network.  I guess that isn’t a pun but a metaphor.


Teasels are easier to work with than some people.  Not as communicative though.

Another beautiful autumn day

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The ‘good’ weather continues.  With Indianapolis being down 18% in rainfall for the year, a nice day is a not nice day.  But we will enjoy it anyway.


In a normal year this leaf in this spot would have been a foot under water.  People are commenting on the lack of color in the leaves (caused by the lack of rain) and it is true that we have to look harder to see good color but it is there.


Time to quit complaining and just enjoy what there is in the woods.


This shot of the leaf in water was 1/15 sec. in duration.  Look at how viscous and ‘sticky’ the water seems.  This effect is enhanced by the comparatively long exposure.


Love that surface tension that produces the blue framing of the leaf.


Autumn comes and plants die back.  Seeds have been broadcast and that part of the work of the plant  is done.    What remains can be beautiful, can’t it?