Julie Kenward
11-02-2008, 01:08 PM
I tend to get a little crazy about leaves this time of year. I find myself making leaf portrait after leaf portrait - sometimes a singular one, sometimes a whole group of them together.
Some attract my eye because of their deeply saturated colors while others grab my attention with their drab, colorless brown tones. Some make me click my shutter because of their surroundings or their backgrounds while others get under my skin with the patterns of their veins or their torn corners.
No matter what it is that attracts me, though, it is always the lighting that makes me fall in love with a particular image. It's hard this time of year not to start to think of the leaf as the subject of my images but, as we all know, it is the way the leaf is lit that is so crucially important. Beautiful lighting - the kind of lighting you get in autumn and winter - can really set apart the images you create at this time of year. Even in the early afternoon, the light is more filtered, more diffused as the intense colors of spring and summer fade back, letting the golden glow of natural lighting come filtering through.
So far this season, this is one of my favorite images. I like the simplicity, the angles, and, most of all, that ethereal lighting that happens on the edge of the woods right before the sun goes down.
Canon 40D, EF 70-200mm f/4L
f4 @ 1/640th, ISO 250
Manual mode, Pattern metering
Handheld, natural lighting, late afternoon sun
Minimal processing in ACR & CS4.
Some attract my eye because of their deeply saturated colors while others grab my attention with their drab, colorless brown tones. Some make me click my shutter because of their surroundings or their backgrounds while others get under my skin with the patterns of their veins or their torn corners.
No matter what it is that attracts me, though, it is always the lighting that makes me fall in love with a particular image. It's hard this time of year not to start to think of the leaf as the subject of my images but, as we all know, it is the way the leaf is lit that is so crucially important. Beautiful lighting - the kind of lighting you get in autumn and winter - can really set apart the images you create at this time of year. Even in the early afternoon, the light is more filtered, more diffused as the intense colors of spring and summer fade back, letting the golden glow of natural lighting come filtering through.
So far this season, this is one of my favorite images. I like the simplicity, the angles, and, most of all, that ethereal lighting that happens on the edge of the woods right before the sun goes down.
Canon 40D, EF 70-200mm f/4L
f4 @ 1/640th, ISO 250
Manual mode, Pattern metering
Handheld, natural lighting, late afternoon sun
Minimal processing in ACR & CS4.