I should have had a nap after work. However, if I had had a nap, I would not have gone out. If I hadn't gone out, I would never have stopped for this photo:
A small How-To on this photo:
These stunning leaves just stood out like crazy on my drive home from work today. I came home, and then made excuses to go out again so I could make myself go back and really do something with it.
This photograph was taken on a really rainy day right at the end of fall. I wanted the leaves in the foreground to be in focus, and the rest of the photo to be just a suggestion of things, so I chose a really low f-number (wide aperture). This gives a very shallow depth of field, so that the thing I choose to focus the camera on is in focus, and the rest is less in focus. This helps the rest of the leaves down at the bottom of the photo to not compete with the main thing I want people to see, while still keeping them in the photo to enhance the composition.
I underexposed the photo a bit because it's really easy to get bright reds (same for yellows) just come out as a blob with very little detail. I wanted the detail to be seen, so I underexposed, and then tweaked the exposure using Curves in my editing program.
The colors were extremely washed out in the trees and sky, making the background almost black and white once I had color balanced the photo in my editing program. I merely took my de-saturation brush and toned the color down in a few small places just a little bit more. Today I was using Paint Shop Pro XI, and I put it through Fade Correction, which washed out the black and whites even more, and made the red leaves really pop!
This photo is available as of tonight as an ACEO on my ACEO shop, and will be available in other sizes soon. Feel free to contact me to find out about any size you like! :)
