Hanging There

It was wall-to-wall sunshine yesterday, an unusual phenomenon recently (normal service has been resumed today – it’s raining)! A beautiful day for getting out there and capturing the colours of Autumn.

We returned to Wrest Park to walk through the woodland and find some images.  My area of central England seems to me to be devoid of rolling countryside with attractive forest; or maybe it’s just that I don’t look hard enough for it. What I do see, everywhere I go, is the beauty in the detail. The small clusters of leaves, the terminal branches and that one single leaf – defying logic, just hanging there waiting for the moment when it too will join the thousands already carpeting the ground.

I search for these, focusing in with a long lens – 375mm film equiv in this instance – shooting into the canopy but standing back.  I call these MicroScapes. Using a long lens, my angle of view means I am able to shoot across the canopy rather than up through it to the sky. And that allows me to get a subdued background to the shot that allows the beauty of that one leaf to stand out un-confused.