Part 2 in a study of fallen autumn leaves

There were only a handful of images I didn't include in yesterday's post about my exploration of fallen leaves on the pavement (mostly) in my neighborhood, so I thought I'd present the rest in today's post. 

The dominant leaf in the lead-off photo in this post is the same species I used to lead off yesterday's post, but yesterday's -- a different leaf (not the exact same one here) was by itself. Today's version is grouped with a couple nearby leaves and some pine needles and separated leaf stems. 

As I mentioned yesterday, I didn't pose any of these shots. They are just as I came upon them, which is why I photographed the grouping immediately below. It was almost as if someone, or something, really had actually posed and positioned these three leaves. 

I photographed the above leaf because it had some water pooled down its center line. 

In yesterday's post, I showed at least one version of the leaf you see above and below. The one above comes with a partner leaf, while the one below comes with a leaf fragment.

I liked the "packaging" of the group above because it included an acorn fragment. 

Above: A couple of leaves (and a leaf fragment) in various degrees of decomposition, "adorned" with some grass blades. 

A study in fallen autumn leaves

 

While out on my walk this morning, I was inspired to approach my annual autumn shoots from a new perspective -- studying those leaves that have been fallen to the ground. 

I was finding myself stopping in my tracks multiple times to take pictures, appreciating not just the leaf (or leaves) themselves, but the backgrounds, the question of whether the leaf was face up or its backside arched upward, whether the stems were straight or curved and the juxtaposition of the leaf(s) in relation to other things nearby -- such as pine needles and the stems and/or fragments of nearby leaves. 

I didn't touch, reposition or "pose" any of the leaves to make my compositions; these were shot just the way I found them. 

I again took these with my iPhone 11, and spent about 20 minutes afterward using the tools in my phone to edit the pictures for crops, exposure, adding shadow detail, vibrancy and, in rare occasions, saturation ever so slightly and reducing highlights. I particularly liked the leaves backgrounded by the main street in the neighborhood; it reminded me of the moon landscape. 

There were two compositions, both of basically the same thing, in which there are many leaves bunched together. This was taken in my backyard. For this composition, I went a little heavier on the adjustments for exposure, brilliance and vibrancy.   

So with that background in mind, here is what I came up with.

Several things to appreciate in the image above -- the colors, the two "eyes" in the full leaf, the background and the small bits of pine needles in the upper right corner. In the first two images below, the backgrounds and the pairing of the two leaves ... and the stems. 

Above, the leaf's stem shadow jumped out at me; below, the linear juxtaposition (beneath the leaf) and the fragment of leaf in the upper right corner. 

 

Above, it's the montage of different leaf shapes and colors and the juxtaposition of pine needles and what appears to be a separated leaf stem ... and then, at the very bottom, the top portion of another leaf. Below, once you get past the striking colors against the street background, I zero in in the diagonal bent of the leaf's stem.

Above and below are separate studies of different leaves in a similar state of decomposition. In addition to the background juxtaposition, there's the stem shadow (above) and interesting contrast in lighting (below) to appreciate.

 

Above and next two below are examinations of leaf shapes, colors, stem shapes and secondary fragment elements. 

Above, a study of the leaf color and shadow against the background; below, a leaf caught in some taller blades of grass at the end of one neighbor's driveway close to the cul de sac.

Above, the perfect shape of the leaf offset by the 90-degree angle bent in the stem; first image below, the curved colorful leaf and its shadow adjacent to another leaf in a considerably less attractive color; and second below, more variety in a cluster of leaf shapes, color and stem directions.

Above and below are my favorite examples of leaves I came across that were arched in the air. 

Above: A leaf and its stem shadow juxtaposed by differing backgrounds created by the meeting of the street (the darker background) and driveway. 

Above, a leaf juxtaposed with leaf fragments, and below, a bent and beaten leaf whose stem is wildly airborne. 

Above and below: Examples of arched or partly arched leaves from ground perspective, allowing for some colorful backgrounds in the neighborhood to serves as secondary elements and a wide range of depth of field for the street pavement.

 

Above: A leaf juxtaposed with an array of pine needles.

Above: This is the cluster of leaves in the backyard I mentioned in the text at the top of the post. Not sure of the tree species theses leaves came from, but the colors include some green from weeds in the vicinity. 

Dissection of an image

The above image was the starting point of an odyssey that I'm sure a lot of photographers have experienced: Finding different ways to look at the same image. The "anatomy of a single image" below tells the story of one such odyssey -- some successes, one surprise and one "I'm not sure sure about this."

The top image isn't anything spectacular or unusual. It was taken inside the Garfield Park Conservatory in Indianapolis in a tropical plants exhibit. The foliage was dangling from a boulder from which a very modest waterfall was spilling. I got behind the waterfall and shot into the light behind it. Dodging the light was nearly unavoidable; the conservatory is a glass-surrounded facility, so no matter what angle I chose to shoot -- unless it were straight on -- I would have had to take into consideration the presence of backlight -- and decide whether I wanted to compensate for it by overexposing, or shooting for silhouette. I chose to overexpose slightly because that day, I wasn't interested in a silhouette; I wanted to capture the color in the foliage and the waterdrop cascade. I wasn't surprised afterward when I saw a lot of the reflective circles -- the result of flare. But I chose to use those to my advantage in this little project.

Again, the shot at the very top is the original image. Right below it is the same frame with a slight increase in the color saturation and contrast. Not a huge difference, but enough to bring out a little more red in the leaf and darken the dark green foliage shadow on the left. Next, I took the same frame one more time, boosted the highlights and increased the saturation (only a little less than the first time). The result is the image above. The red leaves, especially, are beginning to pop out in the frame, which was the objective in the first place. It's fascinating what just a tweak in highlights and saturation can do when you're looking to distinguish elements in an image file.

While studying those three images, it occurred to me that I could crop this frame into smaller segments and create several whole "new" pictures. First, I concentrated on isolating -- and accentuating -- the vertical nature of the leaf foliage itself. So I created a copy of the original image and cropped it to isolate just the leaf vine.

Again I went back to the saturation, highlights and contrast and tweaked with those ever so slightly to effect the vertical version at left. The one thing I didn't like was how the crop drew unwanted attention on the bright white spot in the upper right corner. I figured that if I really wanted to display this version, I could address the white splotch by applying a frame or border to the image, harnessing a bit of the white. Two things I did like about this version:

1) It gave more prominence to the hefty water cluster near the bottom of the red-leafed vine, the heart of the cluster falling right on top of the series of horizontal reflective circles.

2) It played up two solo reflective circles -- one just above the third leaf down, the other on the far left side of the frame, providing a sort of balance.

Next, I wanted to create an extremely horizontal frame. At the far left side of the rectangle, I placed the lower portion of the leaf cluster; on the far right, the green foliage with the white circular spot. So I created that crop off the original, went to the color curves and played up the reds ever so slightly and the greens a bit more and came up with the horizontal slice you see at left. I liked that it maintained the prominence of the water cluster; what I didn't like was that it possibly introduced confusion as the real subject, or focus, of the image -- was it the leafed vine, or the foliage on the right? My initial hope was to include the two for balance, and again initially, I thought that because the leafed vine would be in focus and the green foliage out of focus (beyond the depth of field), that it would be clear that the leafed vine was the focal point. But after making the crop, I wasn't so sure that got accomplished.

I saved the most enjoyable sectioning for last. It was the super-crop of just the horizontal row of reflective circles on the far left of the original image (the one dissected by the unleafed vine).

With only a few droplets in the image anywhere close to being in focus, it left me a challenge to find something to make this version appealing. So I pushed the color curves to the extreme -- and came upon this strikingly dual-shade purple abstract. It did fetch a few comments at my photo.net gallery (in the Manipulations folder). The only drawback to this crop was that the image file is so small -- relative to the original, anyway -- that I probably couldn't squeeze a print larger than 5x7 out of it, and that might be stretching it.