Looking for color...

led me to a local cemetery and golf course.

 

I only had about 45 minutes before sunset so I headed towards a colorful maple tree and got to work.

 

 



 

Isolate specific good looking leaves, watch out for the background and depth of field, and always be conscious of the light.

 

 

 

Sometimes just shoot it while it's there and find out it's not quite right later. I think looking up these trunks gets a little busy.

 

 

 

 

 

Keep looking for the color and pay attention to the light and once it's gone, keep moving.

 

 



 

Shadows fell over the maple tree, but the sun was still hitting some oaks on a nearby golf course.

 

 





 

I really liked the colors on this specific group of changing oak leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

As the sun dropped towards the horizon I had to keep moving to leaves higher on the tree and still in the light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find some good looking leaves, wait for the wind to die down, focus and shoot.

 

 

 

My shutter speeds were getting slow and I was hand holding this stuff so I turned up the ISO and kept working.

 

 

 

I was switching between three different lenses and just did the best I could.

 

 

 

The light was fading fast.

 

 

 

 

So I worked near the trunk and shot almost straight up at the leaves catching the last light up near the top. And then it was all over.

Starry Night...

I went out about midnight to find a place away from town to try and photograph the Orionid meteor shower. The sky was clear and the moon had set a little earlier.

I found a large oak tree, framed the shot and made exposures of about 25 seconds.

 

 

I was trying something new for me. In the past I had used low iso settings and long exposure times of minutes and hours to create star trails. This time I was using an iso of 3200 and 25 second exposures to try and capture the sky more as the eye sees it.

 

 

I was seeing lots of meteors but wasn't able to capture them in my images. I did capture this photo of light from a farmhouse diffused through trees.

 

 

It was a beautiful night to be out in northern Wisconsin.

 

 

Before heading home I found this large white pine tree in a field. I still didn't capture the meteors as they fell just out of frame, but I heard several packs of coyotes singing in the distance. All in all it was a very good night.