Canon Pro 90 IS
7mm at f8
4 seconds at ISO 50

Change of seasons

fall leaf and holiday lights

So as the holiday season rolled around a few years ago, I did an inordinate amount of decorating and strung a single set of lights along the railing of my upstairs deck in North Carolina. My neighbors were, of course, furiously jealous, and the next year they erected two strings of lights...

But anyway, one rainy evening a stray leaf had perched itself on the railing and gave me an interesting composition with some forced perspective and nice depth. However, I have to admit this is an altered shot. The water on the leaf had been producing too many specular reflections from the lights, so I dried the leaf on my shirt for this particular image. Yeah, I know, a real photographer would have waited for the leaf to dry off on its own.

The starbursts are the old photographers' trick of using a small aperture with a bright point light source – you get a "beam" from each of the aperture blades. At the same time, it provides a high depth of field and keeps the foreground and background in focus.