Splayed lighting on neighborhood tree

Back in 2011, when I was still living in Indianapolis, I became keen on a tree I came across on the southwest end of Garfield Park, which was very close to where I had lived. 

I'm sure I photographed the tree — and yes, I referred to it as “The Tree,” — on several occasions. It had a proud stature without being extraordinarily large, nor plentiful of branches or garish.

While out on a morning walk in the neighborhood this week, I had a similar experience after spotting a selective amount of sunlight highlighting an extraordinary rust-colored trunk and branches (see photo leading off the post and a closeup below). 

The tree’s wood looked to me to have the texture of a Crepe Myrtle, but those trees’ wood normally is a dull gray. I later did a deeper research dive and determined that the tree is an arbutus andrachne, whose trunk bark is smooth and exfoliates in summer, leaving a pistachio green color before turning into this color in autumn.

The tree was in the front yard of a home about two-tenths of a mile from my house. It wasn't so much the tree that caught my eye, but the light that was striking it. I used my iPhone 13 Pro to capture these pictures.

I was immediately was thrown back in time to all the lessons I'd had about the importance of light in photo composition. Many skilled photographers will tell you that no matter what a person points a camera at, what he or she is capturing, first and foremost, is light. 

I don’t quite agree with that, but I do agree that lighting is extremely important. A photographer has to be conscious of his/her light with every shot. Almost as important is background; the more solid and less cluttered, the better. 

When I did my walk along the same route the following day, there were heavy clouds offering no sunlit highlights like the first day. But I took a few pictures of the tree anyway to use for comparison (below).

Leaves on the ground, 2025 edition

It was 2020 when I first did a post on what I might describe today as a "study" of fallen autumn leaves on the ground. The idea came to me spontaneously while out for my daily two-mile walk. I liked it so much, I actually did two posts on the subject, and they went live on back to back days. 

A few days ago, the urge to repeat the exercise came to me, again while I was out on my walk, so I decided to do this post, a 2025 version ... and possibly make it an annual autumn tradition at Photo Potpourri. I'm going to limit this year's study to just one post.

Most of the leaves in this post were taken at various points on my own property or the street in front of the house. A few were captured elsewhere in the neighborhood, but probably not more than four or five at most (and probably fewer). 

I made a point to integrate a half-dozen or so shots of very small leaves, something you might not be able to detect unless I otherwise indicate. The last five in this post were among that group. 

One other thing is new to this shoot, and it came in post-processing. I boosted contrast in the majority of the shots to give them a different look. And in the case of the photo leading off the post, I also boosted the saturation to flesh out the multiple colors that attracted me to the leaf in the first place. 

To view the full gallery of leaves I shot on this year's project, follow the link in this sentence. You'll notice that I added six leaves at the bottom of this post in November, including the last one, which is a poison ivy leaf.  

THE FOLLOWING WERE ADDED ON NOV. 14, 2025