Day 326 - Light falling on oak leaves

I have been fascinated with oak leaves for some time now, ever since I noticed that they cling to their branches well into the winter. In fact, I'm not even sure that they ever drop off. Maybe they just renew themselves each spring.

Fredericton is home to some pretty amazing oak trees, including this one that stands in front of the public library downtown. There are several more in my neighbourhood and, although their leaves don't seem to colour as vividly as do the maples, they still provide some interesting shapes and shades every fall.

Of particular interest to me in these photographs, however, is not so much the colour and shapes of the oak leaves but the difference the amount of light allowed into the camera makes in how vividly those colours come across. Simply by speeding up the shutter by a small amount, you really bring the leaves to life.

The upper photo was taken with the aperture at f8 and the shutter speed at 1/60th of a second. It is a bright shot and, on first glance, seems like the better of the two. But there is, in fact, too much light and the colour and detail of the leaves gets bleached out. The lower shot, taken at f8 and 1/100th of a second, is much darker. You lose the brick in the background but you gain vivid colour in the leaves themselves, especially the oranges and reds that are all but lost in the first picture. I think they're both nice pictures but I prefer the lower one, with its brilliant colours and darkened down background, over the upper one, which seems over-bright and bland by comparison.

Day 70 - A Light in the Darkness

Another attempt at night-time photography produces a pair of photographs of the same lamp at the end of a driveway on Bessborough Street in Fredericton.

This lamp is extremely bright and is visible from a quite a distance away. I like its shape and detail but, in the daytime, pictures of it just seem flat while, at night, you face the light issue. So I thought I should do some experimenting.

In the top photo, I simply left the camera on its automatic settings, interested to see what the light metre would make of this extremely bright light surrounded by deep darkness. Clearly, the metre takes readings around the outside of the frame since it read the darkness of the edges rather than the illumination of the lamp in the centre. The result is a long shutter opening, leading to a slightly shaky image, with the centre of the shot oversaturated by light and the edges showing some detail in the darkness. With the neat shape of the light coming from the lamp, I think it's an interesting picture.

The lower photo is the product of a manual setting on the camera. I moved a little closer to the lamp, then tried to estimate what settings would get me some detail of the lamp's housing itself. This meant allowing a lot less light to enter the camera. I knew I'd lose the detail in the background but I was more interested in seeing the lamp itself.

The camera's light metre, of course, was no help so I had to guess. Well, actually, I had to take several pictures at different settings until one worked out. This photo, of which I'm quite proud, was taken with an aperture at f8 and a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second. I was kind of surprised that those settings turned out to be the right ones since "f8 at 1/60th" are generally felt to be the appropriate settings for landscape photographs in bright sun. Note, as well, that the shutter speed of 1/60th of a second was fast enough to eliminate the fuzziness caused by the shake of my hand holding the camera.