Arriving home from work late one evening, I happened to spot a yellow leaf lying on the ground. Pulling into the garage, I got out of my truck and walked over to inspect the scene. That’s when I noticed the second leaf right next to the yellow one I originally noticed. The first thing I thought when I saw these leaves so close together was of two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time.
I quickly turned around, ran into the house, and grabbed my camera. Getting back outside, I set up my tripod directly over the two leaves. I took a few shots, but I knew from looking at the images on the back of the camera that I wouldn’t be too impressed with them. I lowered my tripod even further and took some more shots. They were better but still struck me as being average pictures at best.
Finally, I lowered the tripod all the way down so the camera was only about six to eight inches above the ground. I liked how the fallen leaves were blanketing the ground, so I positioned the camera to include more of the background. Getting the shot framed the way I wanted, I pressed the shutter button.
Opening the file in Lightroom, I decided the image was too light and wanted to be a little bit darker. To accomplish this, I reduced the overall exposure a little bit, increased contrast, and lowered the highlights. I also added a little bit of texture and clarity and slightly boosted the vibrancy of the colors.
I wanted to emphasize the two center leaves, and I thought the best way to do that was to blur the rest of the image. To do this, I took the image into Photoshop where I used the lasso tool to carefully select the two main leaves. Once I had the leaves selected, I used the menu command Select > Inverse to select everything in the image except the two leaves.
After inverting the selection, I used the menu command Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Using the adjustment slider in the dialog box, I carefully adjusted the amount of blur that was applied. Too little blur and everything would tend to blend together. But, too much blur would be distracting and draw the eye away from the subject. Like Goldilocks, I needed the blur to be just right.
And, as for these two old friends, I don’t know what stories they were telling each other, but I’m sure they were good ones!