Harbor Eat 'Em

I took advantage of yesterday's dry weather to take a little traipse through the Arboretum in Seattle. As I always do in the autumn, I had a lot of fun with color. Occasionally, usually when sitting at home thinking, I'll convince myself that I need to take on a challenge and do some black-and-white photography. But then, I get to a location and - especially in the spring and fall, but really all year - my brain goes "COLOR!" and I forget all about my commitment to try out black and white. Oh well.

(This isn't to say that you can't take black-and-white autumn photographs effectively. You can, and indeed, I've seen some - including, of course, some by Ansel Adams. It's tricky, but with careful choices of subject matter, lighting, and control over how the black and white comes out, it can definitely be done, and the autumn leaves stand out as vividly as they would in a color photograph. It's just to say that I love color too much!)

Now down to business. Although most of the trees and shrubs at the Arboretum were still green, I did happen upon a few nice autumn scenes. The first comes from the north part of the arboretum, from the bridge to Foster Island. Taking pictures on a bridge in a crowded park can be tough, due to the vibrations caused by others' movement, but there were sufficient pauses in the armies of stroller-pushing parents to take some successful pictures.

I was attracted to the way changing leaves were framing four ivy-clad cottonwood trunks, and tried several different perspectives. The best two are below. Even though the second has a stronger sense of depth, since the trunks are more spread out, I think I like the first one better - the color is more balanced, with red leaves on the right as well as the left. The yellow leaves are also more prominent. And it's the color contrasts, really, that give the scene the zest it needs to be interesting.

Next is a photograph of one of the ornamental maples in the main part of the Arboretum. I liked how the red seed pods contrasted against the still-green leaves (something I've seen occasionally in native vine maples). There were some bushes right in front of the tree, so it was actually difficult to get to a spot where I could make a good composition. Below was my best attempt, and though a bit busy, I think it captures the contrast, and the sweep of the leaves, somewhat effectively. Since I was far away from the seeds (relatively speaking, due to the bushes underfoot) I used a very wide aperture of f/3.2 to achieve maximum background blur. Even more would have been nice, if my lens had been able.

For the third image, we are back to Foster Island, this time the open wetland area on the north end. I liked the changing colors of some of the hardhack leaves, and the way the flower/seed heads all leaned the same way. I opened up to f/4.8, which I believe was as far as the lens would let me go at this particular focal length.

Finally, we are back again to the main part of the Arboretum, and there were a few beautiful shrubs that had both red leaves and berry clusters. The background is a bit splotchy, as I knew it would be, but this particular composition was my best bet. I opened up the aperture to f/4 - which is not quite as wide as I could have gone, but I needed to preserve a bit of detail on the berries.

Toodle-oo!