Tag Archives: leaves

First shoot in awhile

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Becky and I went out with our cameras this morning.  There were little rain squalls from time to time but not enough to worry about.  At first we thought we might go downtown Indianapolis, then we switched to maybe the Indianapolis Art Museum – we had gone there last New Year’s Eve day.  We were going across the Butler University campus and the fountain said ‘stop here.’  So we did.

Using it for a background was as close as I got to photographing the fountain and being happy with the result.

Reflections in the ice were interesting.


The leaves are dead but not altogether gone.



And there is a bell tower.


A very satisfying morning.

Looking for the light

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Composition in photography requires a compelling subject shown in ‘good’ light.  Good light for one subject might not be the same as good light for another.  But in any event the light is hugely important and photographers work at finding the right combinations of light and subject.  Some photographers would even argue that the light is the subject.

Sometimes the light comes from the side.


And sometimes from the back.


Obviously it can come from the front as well.  Yesterday I stumbled onto a different kind of light, at least different from that I am accustomed to using.  I was walking along Fall Creek (that walk is where all these images came from) and I walked under the bridge supporting I465 to get to some small waterfalls I like.  There are drains in the bridge to prevent puddles of water from building up and there is a course of rock under the bridge to catch the dripping water and carry it to Fall Creek.  The bridge here is more than eleven lanes wide so the area under it is something like a wide tunnel.  It is quite shaded under there and as I was crossing the course of rocks, I noticed some leaves down among them.  Since I had my tripod I could work in the dim light and I was curious to see what images of leaves against rocks would look like.  I was impressed.


The exposures on these shots range from a half second to a second in duration.  The light is mostly diffuse but somewhat directional and I spent a few minutes shooting.


This next one is an HDR shot (a sandwich of three shots – overexposed, underexposed and metered shot) which allows a wider range of exposures to be compressed into a range that can be shown on a screen.


I’m impressed and I will be going back there.

Don’t expect too much

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I find that it is best not to expect too much when I go out to shoot.  It narrows the focus and I almost never see exactly what I had hoped to see. 
I had gone out to shoot the emerging berries and ended up shooting mainly the leaves.  That was the other day and this is all I have to show for it.

Today was different.  I had no expectations and it was a more satisfying day.



Those are insects in there.  It went down to 23 degrees last night, the first hard frost of the year.  They may have survived.


The last three shots were done outside an orthopedic veterinarian’s office in Franklin.  I had driven a friend and her dog down there.  The dog, 12 years old, had torn a cruciate ligament chasing school buses (inside a fence while the buses were on the street).  She won’t be doing that anymore but the other day the dog went for a ride, saw a school bus from in the car and barked at it.  So now she has a car and a driver, no more running after the buses.


Today the berries look fine but the leaves are wilted.

And then there is this shot, entirely unexpected:


I guess that is what wondering is all about.  If I only saw what I expected to see, what would there be to wonder about?

The leaves are just about gone

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We have a lot of trees around our house; that is one of the reasons we bought it 30 years ago.  The walnut leaves have been gone for some time as have most of the hickory leaves.  Some oak leaves are hanging on but they are coming down too.  I went out today to work on finishing getting the leaves off the ‘lawn’ but  it was so windy I decided to wait.  No point having to do it twice.

The leaves at Fort Harrison are largely gone.


I expect these will be gone in the next few days.


But as leaves are falling the sycamores are standing out more.  And there are still a few hangers on.


Their going is not without its beauty as well.


Sic transit gloria.

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.

A day at Brown County State Park

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Friends Lee, Freddie and I went to Brown County State Park today.  We are all retired, and given that some of the routes around Indianapolis were tied up with a one-day beautification project, we didn’t get started shooting until nearly 10:30.  This is not the best time for landscape work but there was some nice reflection in Lake Ogle.

And there were leaves in the water.  I can’t get over the surface tension in this image.  It isn’t particularly noticeable before clicking the shutter.


I spent most of my time shooting little things (again).


But this time I have an excuse.  The competition this month in the camera club is narrow depth of field.  I like this one.


But I like this one better.


It was a good day all around.

A few small things

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My friend Sally and I went to a nature preserve outside of Cicero, IN this morning.  The sky was clear and it was rather windy.  The wind was sporadic and in between gusts there were opportunities for photographing plant life.


I go with every intention to photograph landscapes but I keep coming back to the small things.


I think one reason for shooting small things is that there are so many of the them and they are often overlooked.  Lots of opportunities there.

There were opportunities down by the creek as well.


There is something about these images that connote both motion and stillness, the ephemeral and the permanent.


These two images were shot a couple of minutes apart.  I was not aware of how pronounced the effect of surface tension is until I started photographing leaves in water.


Perhaps I’ll get out again tomorrow.

More than color

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There is no doubt autumn foliage can be beautiful.  New England, for example, will soon be filling up with ‘leaf peepers’ who travel significant distances to see what fall has to offer.  There are even websites tracking the status of autumn color.


We’ve had a lot of dry weather in Indiana this year, there are bans on open burning in over 50 counties in the state.  No one expects the leaves here to be very colorful this autumn.  But if the foliage in general will be comparatively dull in color, there are exceptions.


And one needs to be in the right place at the right time.


The sun backlit this maple leaf for only a few minutes and then it was gone.

But if the color is not there as we would like to see it, the texture of leaves is still with us.


If you picked up these leaves you would have to be careful with them or they would crumple and fall apart.  But as long we just look at them, preferably closely, the texture is there and it is beautiful.


Time to go do some more shooting.  Today’s leaves will be different from yesterday’s.

At Fall Creek

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I went back to Fall Creek today intending to shoot more leaves in the water.  That had worked nicely the other day but today, unlike then, there was virtually no wind.  Hence few leaves falling in the water.  But there were some.  I especially like the way surface tension shows up.  That can be a design element for photographers.

If there weren’t many leaves there were logs in the water and this was interesting too.

I liked the symmetry here.


There was a lot of color but I thought it distracted from form.  Jay Maisel, an outstanding photographer, repeating what he had been told, once said that color is the enemy of form.  I can see what he means.


A few leaves did show up eventually.  I’ll go back tomorrow.

Leaves and water

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I went over to Fort Harrison State Park yesterday morning.  We had had a long spell of hot weather (record breaking on at least one day) and cooler air followed a front into the area.  In other words, it was still pretty warm but it was windy.  Not a good day for exacting close up work.  But it did mean that leaves would be falling on the water at Fall Creek.  I went down there and it was a bonanza.




The wind did die down long enough to do a little close up work.


I wonder what is out there today?