What a long and productive Autumn 2020 season it has been in New England. I have been shooting autumn color for 5 weeks now, and it is still not quite yet finished.
So I decided that I’ll do my autumn posts this year essentially in chronological order, in order to show the progression of the season. My autumn photography actually started with this shot, taken 8/27/20. A bad drought this summer led to these ferns turning from green to yellow very early in the season. I don’t know if an image could possibly have more V - shapes in it. You gotta love fractals in nature. The little bits of Hair Cap moss don’t hurt either.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any critiques or comments are welcome
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Canon 5D MKIV, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, ISO 320, 4 seconds at f16.
Very nice! Love the textures on the fern leaves. And I think the little bits of moss showing through really make the photo - they tell more of the story than if it was just the fern frond.
You are whetting my appetite for five weeks of images this this lovely intimate scene, Ed! I am jealous as I have only gotten three days shooting so far this autumn. Maybe the dry spell turned out in your favor. I love the way you framed this with all those lovely radiating diagonals. That is what I call harmony in nature. The earth tones of the fern work beautifully with the greens of the moss. I have no suggestions.
A really nice study in lines, textures, and complementary colors. Well seen.
I noticed that the top of the bracken fern, esp left is more bleached out than the rest, pulling my eye a bit . I added a bit of saturation and color, for a slightly different effect.
Hi Ed, love the texture in the fern coupled with the interesting patterns. Shows wonderfully with the green beneath as others have mentioned. Quite nice.
@Allen_Sparks@Bonnie_Lampley@Ed_Lowe@Dick_Knudson thank you all for your comments, I appreciate hearing your thoughts. Dick, I think your suggested tweak is a great idea, good pickup on that issue, it makes a difference. The fern had seen better days, but I was reluctant to push global saturation too far. However your idea to address the issue locally helps a lot.
Ed Lowe, I’ve been very cautious about Covid this year, cancelled lodging in northern VT/NH, and refused to visit my usual haunts of scenic overlooks, trails, ponds, waterfalls etc, due to the large number of people getting outdoors this year. I instead decided to focus on intimates and small scenes in the woods where I could get away from people. And because I cancelled all my flying photo trips this year, I decided to partly make up for it by doing even more local autumn foliage than I normally would. In hindsight, this approach led me to take some very different types of foliage images this year, which was good.
Sounds as though your strategy to avoid scenic sand concentrate on intimates paid off. I find those little green plants in this image quite interesting. I would have played the main subject off them a bit more by making them more prominent. You could do that by using just the bottom half of the image. But I suppose that would be a too drastic crop.
Actually I think your suggestion works quite well Igor. Here is a rework where I took this down to 4:5, and I think it does a nice job of accentuating the Hair Cap Moss. Great idea, Igor, thank you.
