Autumn’s Last Stand

Autumn is one of my favorite seasons.  The oppressive heat of summer has abated, but winter’s cold has not yet made its presence known.  Autumn is also the season when the leaves change their color, and the landscape screams “Look at me!”

However, in Arkansas, it is not at all unusual for there to be virtually no autumn color at all.  Or, there could be a huge change of color in one part of the state but nothing in the rest of the state.  In those relatively rare years when everything seems to come together and the autumn color explodes, it often seems the leaves are on the trees one evening and on the ground by the very next morning.  That unpredictability and short life span make photographing autumn color a rather challenging endeavor.  So, when the opportunity presents itself, you have to be ready.  This image is a case in point.

One Monday morning several years ago as I made my way out of town, I noticed the leaves had suddenly undergone their anticipated transformation not far from my home.  I lamented the situation I was in:  autumn colors I had been waiting for weeks but unable to stop and photograph them.  All I could do was pray they lasted through the end of the week when I would be able to get back and photograph them.

Naturally, the weather had other plans, and the week turned out to be rather windy nearly every day.  Driving back home at the end of the week, I was disappointed to find the wind had done exactly what the wind does – blow most of the leaves off their limbs and branches.

I got up early the next morning to see if I could find any last remaining survivors.  Reaching this location, I found these two trees, standing side by side, that still had some autumn leaves attached.  Of course, these trees were located in an area that wasn’t accessible on foot.  Fortunately, I was carrying my 400mm lens which provided the perfect focal length to isolate and frame the two trees the way I wanted.

With my old Canon 5D Mark II, which I used to take this photo, digital noise became an increasingly obvious problem with ISOs above about 800.  Because of a slight breeze that morning, I had to use a faster shutter speed than I normally would have that, despite a moderate aperture, forced the ISO to 1600.  I feared that would create too much noise, but, without any other options, I pressed the shutter button and hoped for the best.

When I got home and looked at the picture on my computer, I was, needless to say, disappointed with the results.  The noise was as bothersome as I had expected which caused the picture to be far softer than I could abide.  I filed the image away on my hard drive never expecting to do anything more with it or for it to ever see the light of day.

Fast forward to today.  Not only have my photo processing skills improved in those intervening years, but so has photo processing software.  By making various tonal adjustments to the exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadow and then running the file through Topaz Labs’ Sharpen AI software, I was able to resurrect this image from the digital graveyard on my computer and create an image that captured autumn’s last stand.