Into the Canopy

I spent a lot of last Autumn looking at the leaf litter on the ground. In the last month I have done the opposite and looked up into the canopy. It’s a beautiful sight.

We’ve all at one time or another taken an image like this. It sounds easy, but actually finding an attractive composition can be quite difficult and my success rate is not better than about one in ten. This was taken at a focal length of 27mm. The wider the lens the more interesting the images become.

If you look up for long enough, passers-by will also look up. Be prepared for comments. People will stop and ask: ‘What can you see? Squirrels, birds?’. When I say: ‘No, just the leaf canopy’, I often get strange looks and an ‘Oh’ that usually indicates puzzlement that a sane photographer would photograph leaves from the bottom up. Show them an image from the back screen and the more enlightened among them begin to see the beauty of the canopy, others remain nonplussed. It’s part of being a photographer, part of the territory, from time to time you will be regarded as a sandwich short of a picnic as the saying goes.