Autumn Leaves -- Clinging to Life

One of my neighbours a couple of blocks away has a beautiful Maple tree in his front yard. Every time I drove by in the last week or so I remarked to myself that I really needed to try to capture the amazing pastoral scene ....

Of course, a tree like that in the middle of a field on a sunny day could make for an award-winning image, while a shot of someone's front yard on a cloudy day (that's about all we've had for weeks) makes for a documentary image. *sigh* ...

Still, worth a shot. I popped over at lunch one day last week for a few minutes, carrying the big lenses (Nikon 300mm F4 AFS and Tamron 180mm F3.5 MACRO) and my little Fuji F70EXR. The first thing I did was set up the tripod on a sidewalk across from his side yard (he lives on a corner, which helps with angles.) Obviously, I had to avoid too much clutter and preferably take the car parked across the street out of the equation.

I set the F70EXR first to about 180 then 270 and chose to shoot the Tamron. 300mm would be simply too much. I was able, however, to also capture some nice images with the Fuji compact.

I started with this shot from the Fuji ... it shows the traditional weakness of small sensor cameras, the inability to isolate your subject ... the Blue Spruce across the street is just as sharp as the wonderful Maple. But at least you can see what I was working with.


I was able to isolate the hanging part of the tree without a too-distracting background.


And to show the lawn, which was perfectly blanketed by lovely leaves ...


I then switched to the D300 and the Tamron for a while ... here, I show the front yard without including the neighbour's yard as a sharp detail ...


A better angle for the Tamron ...


An isolation shot of the tree and its lower branches ...


A detail shot of one sprig with the rest of the tree thrown completely out of focus ... this is why I love dSLR shooting ...


At this point, I'd had my fill of the tree itself and decided to turn my attention to the leaves on the ground. Any leaf that was upside down was covered with beautiful, evenly-spaced, large water droplets. Really, really pretty.

My Feisol 3471 tripod can lay almost flat and allow the cam to point straight down ... for some reason, I forgot to capture that interesting detail shot. Another time, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I started shooting the leaves individually and in small groups.




I also captured the leaves with the Fuji F70EXR, which means hand holding the cam right above the leaves when shot wide or about 3 feet away on full tele ...




Obviously, I was enamored with the water droplets ... but I also love the details in the leaves.



This last shot is incredibly sharp ... so I thought I'd see what sort of detail I could extract with Topaz Adjust 3 ...


And I was done ... but before leaving, I grabbed a couple of images around that rock in the yard with the Fuji ... I thought these were kind of nice ...



The snow will arrive soon here, but I appreciate the Maple tree's ability to hang on very late into the season ... it means we have lovely colors around the neighbourhood right up until the snow gives us a completely different look ...