Frosted Leaf

I took this on a frosty morning in Redmond, Washington, where I was visiting my son. (We had a wonderful time! By the way, flying on Thanksgiving Day was easy--airports were less crowded than usual.)

50mm lens, f2.8, ISO 200, 1/250. The leaf was on the sidewalk.

In editing, I masked the leaf and used Topaz Detail to bring out the details. I also blurred the background, cropped, added a texture by Coffee Shop. I did other things that I didn't make a note of. Not as sharp as I'd like, but, for me, fun colors. I put the black border on it so it wouldn't blend in with the site's background; it is not part of the image.

Love the crispy, crackly feel to this! So appropriate with so much of the country affected by the Arctic Express this week! The textured bkgd is really nice with the bits of subtle colors and soft blurred shapes contrasting and encouraging your focus on the clear lines and sparkly colors of the leaf. The bright yellow edges are wonderfully eye-catching.

The preservation of the leaf, the coarse texture of the frost, delicate network of veins and complementary colors combine for a lovely image.

The texture difference between the leaf and the background is wonderful, and it's nice that softer versions of the blue are echoed in the background. The limited color pallette and square crop seem made for each other. Very nicely done.

Thank you all for your supportive words. :bg3:

Anita, I think the background is especially nice on this one and I like the yellows and blues together:S3:

I love the BG treatment and the blues and yellows. The "crunchiness" of the leaf evokes frost very well. I'd be interested in an alternative treatment that was just a little less crunchy, but it may not be as interesting. Or even possible -- I know if you zoom way in on frost you get tiny rectangles of ice -- that may be just the way it is.

Thank you Diane and Cheryl. Diane--I may try a different treatment.