Foliage Fever

I have been waiting for several weeks to see the explosion of colorful foliage that comes with autumn.  I had been seeing a lot of leaves on the very cusp of making that change, but they just hadn’t gotten there yet . . . until last night.

Driving home, I went by a small pond not far from my house.  It was raining and getting dark, but I instantly noticed this small patch of leaves that had erupted into a brilliant shade of red.

Getting up this morning, I expected overcast skies and possibly rain.  But, I wasn’t going to let that deter me from photographing those leaves.  After all, cloudy skies usually soft, even lighting, which is the best kind of lighting for shooting autumn foliage.  Instead, the morning dawned with generally clear skies. 

Fortunately, there were two very important mitigating conditions.  First, there was still a thin layer of clouds that helped reduce the lighting contrast.  Second, when I arrived at the pond, the patch of leaves was in an area that was still being mostly shaded from the sun by surrounding trees.

There were only a couple of spots from which I could shoot.  But, as they were about 10 to 15 feet apart, there was enough distance between them to provide different perspectives.

Reviewing the images on my computer, this shot immediately caught my attention because of how there seemed to be a spotlight shining on the tree trunk.

In Adobe Camera Raw, I reduced the overall exposure and darkened the shadow area to provide stronger contrast.  I also increased the picture’s color saturation, especially in the reds and oranges.

Opening the image in Photoshop, I applied the Tonal Contrast and Glamour Glow filters from Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 collection.  The combination of these filters enhanced the contrast of the image’s various tones while creating a softer, slightly ethereal look.

Settings:  560mm, 1/20 sec, f/16, ISO 400