A Nearer Landscape #1

Early in my career I thought about all the wonderful photos I could take if only I could travel to exotic locations. As one who always wanted to see what was around the next bend, I felt that my photos would greatly improve by going to where National Geographic photographers and writers went.

Then one of my photographer friends burned out rather quickly working for the Magazine I loved. I still anxiously read the articles and look with wonder at the terrific photographs in National Geographic Magazine but I now have a better understanding of the process than I did years ago.

This past Friday was a very rainy, fall day in the Chicago area. I used this as an opportunity to take some photos. I’ve always enjoyed shooting in the rain because a coating of water saturates the colors. The neutral color of a rainy sky adds a purity to the colors.

My goal was to shoot for no more than an hour, venture no farther than my yard and to come up with 10 photos that showed me something new.

Photography is much more about seeing than it is about taking photos. Familiar subjects seen in a new light become a different – even exotic world. (An hour in the rain could be miserable if this were not true.) Most of the hour was spend seeing; very little was spent shooting.

The images in this series are very straightforward in both composition and treatment. I opted to not use unusual angles or anything other than a “here it is” approach to shooting. I also used no Photoshop filters or any post-production tools other than an occasional use of curves to put the contrast back into sync with my eye.

I didn’t travel to faraway lands shooting these but I looked at each subject as if it were seen for the very first time. And I had a blast.

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Landscape #1

This is a horse chestnut tree leaf from my neighbor’s tree. I always have thought of these fallen leaves as a dirty brown color. This one was a beautiful surprise.

horse chestnut tree leaf