Friday, November 20, 2009

November 18, 2009 - Is the tree on fire?

1/60f2.8ISO 40073mmRAW

Just a real quick post today for a photo that didn't take long. There is a beautiful flame-orange tree in the park down the street and I had been dying to take a photo of it. But there was a slight problem — it is sandwiched between the four-lane street and the parking lot for the park, so I wasn't sure how to photograph it without including something distracting in the backgroud.

Obviously, I finally figured it out.

I took out my 70-200mm lens and positioned myself along the fence about 80 feet from the tree. Using the focal length to my advantage, I was able to frame the tree and the fence in such a way as to leave out the parking lot (which was immediately outside the frame on the right). It also required some timing to leave out all the cars driving past on the left. It took several attempts, but I finally got a good, clear shot.

I didn't have a tripod or monopod for this shot, so I had to brace the camera as much as possible to avoid camera shake at this low shutter speed. Since I was shooting around 70mm, that meant my shutter speed needed to be at least 1/70 of a second. As you can see, I wasn't there. So some of the shots came out a little blurry from me not holding the camera still enough. This is another instance of where taking a lot of shots (by holding the shutter button down) helped produce a clear, shake free image.

To brace the camera, I knelt down on my right knee and rested my left elbow on the top of my left thigh while keeping my right arm close to the body. Because I was holding the heavy lens in my left hand, the left leg provided lots of support.

As for things I wish I could change, I wish the day had been sunny and not overcast. That would have let the blue sky shine through the leaves instead of the bright white overcast sky. I also wish there wasn't so many leaves on the ground because the nice thick green grass made a good contrast in color with the leaves in the tree.

And in case you are wondering, these leaves are really that color. I did very little manipulation in Photoshop Elements to accentuate the color. Very little.

1 comment:

Sheree in GA said...

Wow, what a gorgeous picture!!!!