Having Fun with Leave Abstracts

OK. Leaves are falling. Sad, but that's just the nature of things. And instead of complaining about the cold and dreary season that's about to come upon us, we can still have fun! Just take a macro lens and get close to the ground. And do not focus on the "nice" leaves only. I found the half broken down ones even more interesting. See this example below.

The trick is to find a flat one. Once they lay around for a while, they get dry and wrinkle up. And wrinkles require too much depth of field that a macro lens at that magnification usually does not offer that easily. Sure, bringing leaves into your studio and putting them under a glas to flatten them might work as well... but I prefer to take photos of objects in their natural environments.

And then just try different angles and compositions. Find out what works best only on a bigger screen once the image have been downloaded. You can still rotate and crop, but you loose resolution and quality in the process. So try to get as close to a good composition already while shooting.

In post processing you can then add more contrast or clarity, sharpen the image and optimize the colors. Those subjects without a background reference are quite forgiving.


Maple Leaf Abstract

Spider Webs

Late summer and Fall 2017 brought a lot of foggy mornings. And one day I finally managed to get out early enough before it all burned off. Equipped with rain gear and my camera, I ventured into the field southwest of out house. I was more interested in the dead trees, but ran into those perfect spider webs that caught my eye. No spiders at home in many, but still... the dew made for very nice images. The biggest challenge here: Just the slightest breeze can bring them out of focus...
Spider Web (I)


Spider Web (II)


Spider Web (III)

Barn Series

These are a few shots back from late winter/early spring of 2016. The little bit of snow we had this winter is gone, but the blue skies make photography interesting despite the drab ground colors.

The farm with the silos can be found on the Lake Champlain Islands along the West Shore Road in Alburg, while the other barn photos were taken right here in Westford during some of our local walks along Huntley Road and Cambridge Road.

Red and Blue make for a good combination, despite the missing white :-)

Restart

Christmas Tree (Casa Crana, 2016)
As I am still experimenting with how to best publish/showcase some of my photos, I have started and then stopped this blog. Now I have decided to give it another try. I am not really ready to hand off the copyrights of all my hard work to Facebook, Flickr and the like.

Suiting the time of the year, I'll start with this photo that shows our own tree this year. A lot has happened and I plan to write about that later and also post older photos in the future. Keep coming back!

Summer Evening in Westford

August has been dry and rather warm this year. It's September as I am posting this, but the photo is from August, only a few days old. There is a barn down the road from us with haybales in front. I have been driving by every day, but last week I had to get there with my camera in the evening light to take photos.

Here is the result after some 'Topaz' post processing that brings out the hazy mood of that warm late summer day even better (you can click onto the image above to get a higher resolution one).

For those of you who do not know yet: I am using some photo editing plugins from Topaz Labs (Adjust, Simplify, DeNoise, ...). One of my favorite settings in "Adjust" is called 'faded glory'. I used this one on the barn photo and tweaked a few things here and there. Although I hardly noticed them at exposure time, I especially like the goldenrods in the foreground.