I love to photograph contrasting elements. Whether they are contrast in lighting, color, or something else, contrasting elements almost always catch my eye. This picture is a great example of what I mean when I talk about contrasts. Bright glowing leaves against an extremely dark, virtually black, background. What an incredible opportunity!
The evening I took this shot, the temperature was pretty cool with, I soon discovered, a slight intermittent breeze blowing. Wearing only a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, I wasn’t exactly dressed for the weather.
In most situations like this, I just go on about my business and don’t even bother trying to get a picture. I usually rationalize this inaction by telling myself a similar or better opportunity will present itself again soon, shooting conditions aren’t perfect, or one of a thousand other reasons not to shoot.
But, this time, I decided to get the picture. I grabbed my camera and 100-400mm lens, attached them to my tripod, and out the door I went. I barely noticed the cool evening air as I set up my equipment on my front porch.
Looking at the scene through the viewfinder, I realized there was a light breeze blowing intermittently that was causing the leaves to rustle. While I had originally been concerned about getting adequate depth of field, my primary consideration now turned to ensuring the shutter speed was fast enough to keep the swaying leaves from blurring. But, I still needed an aperture small enough to have sufficient depth of field.
Using the manual mode setting on my camera, I set the shutter speed to 1/500 of a second to account for the breeze and chose an aperture of f/16 to address the depth of field issue. As I typically do when I use manual mode, I selected auto ISO resulting in an ISO of 2500.
Then, it was just a matter of looking through the viewfinder and waiting for the breeze to subside so the leaves could settle down so I could create this image.