Friday, October 23, 2009

Yellow leaves, blue sky

click photo to enlarge
Autumn is a time of year when, depending on the turn that the weather takes, you can convince yourself that it's still summer or you find yourself lamenting the onset of winter. As I type this "reflection" the area of Lincolnshire in which I live has had a full day of light rain - the first such day for months - that brought with it thoughts of the darker, colder, shorter days to come.

However, two days earlier, when I took this photograph, the sun was shining on the brightly coloured leaves of the maples. As I looked up into a tree and framed this shot, full of bright yellow, deep blue and clear white it almost seemed like I was looking back into summer: only the slight edge on the wind and the crunch of leaves beneath my feet reminded me that it was definitely autumn.

The yellow/orange with blue of this image shows the power of complementary colours, each deepening the apparent hue of the other, and generating a vibrancy that has appealed to artists, photographers and designers down the centuries.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 86mm (172mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On