ANOTHER WALK IN THE WOODS

We are definitely close to the end of the fall color season.  And, frankly, it was not a particularly good one from the point of view of richness of color.  This morning was cloudy, but it was a bright overcast and there was very little wind, so I decided to pay one more visit to our subdivision's woods to get some final shots of the fading color.

But first, I did take note of a shagbark hickory in the woods.  Most of the trees are varieties of maples, oaks, and the mundane deciduous trees, so this tall and very straight hickory, recognizable by its distinctive bark,  stood out.

I am still working to capture good shots of the foliage by pointing up and allowing the light to illuminate the translucent leaves.  I thought my results were mixed.

Here is another shot that I cropped down quite a bit.

For these shots I felt the dark branches gave the images a stained glass look, and they are generally where I set my focus.

Here is the shot that I thought was the most successful of this group.

I also too a number of "horizontal" shots.  In the following photo I was focusing on the clump of leaves and the tree trunk, planning to have the background be out of focus to draw attention to the subject for the shot.  This was shot at a wide open f/4 aperture to minimize depth of field.

Finally, I looked down and took a shot of the two leaves of a maple seedling that was surrounded by fallen non-maple leaves.

John

PUMPKINS

One of our neighboring communities, Whitefish Bay, hosts a pumpkin carving display each year in a small village park.  This year on the Saturday before Halloween I paid the park a visit with my camera.  The display seemed to have two main components, pumpkins carved by residents--of all ages--and specialty pumpkins incorporating more complexity.

First a few shots of the "regular" jack-o-lanterns.

This is just a sampling of what must have been a few hundred such carvings.  It is evident that there is a variety of aesthetic quality to these pumpkins.

For decorative purposes the area was decorated with corn stalks, which I thought offered some opportunities for semi-abstracts.

For whatever reason, I also took a shot of a pumpkin with an elongated stem.  My goal was to keep the stem in good focus and to allow the pumpkins in the background to go out of focus but to remain identifiable.

And then there were the specialty pumpkins, which generally were much larger.

Orthodontics?

Too complicated?

Despite how it appears in this photograph, this last pumpkin was my favorite of the bunch.  Maybe it was the mascara and the eyelashes.

John

A WALK IN THE WOODS

This week marked the peak of fall color in our area, though the colors haven't seemed as bright as they have in past years.  We have a 5-acre stand of woods in our subdivision, and, as I did last year, I took a walk through the woods with my camera.

I am generally poor at trying to capture more panoramic views of fall color--they always come across as trite.  So I spent my time either looking down or looking up to shoot smaller compositions.

First, looking down at fallen leaves, I was searching for leaves that could serve as focal points for the shots.

I confess to "staging" shots from time to time, but this last shot, which includes the leaves of a maple seedling, was not staged.

Looking up, I focused on leaf-bearing branches that showed diverse color.  My goal here was to keep the leaves in the foreground in focus and allow the more distant foliage to go out of focus.  To do this I generally used a wide-open aperture and tried to find branches whose leaves were more or less in the same plane.  These first couple of shots were just OK.

The following shot was unusual in that I was focusing on just a couple of leaves and wanted to show the tree but keep it out of focus.  A little weird.

One of the problems with the above shots was that there seemed to be too much empty sky that was predominantly white because of a high overcast.  The shot below had more foliage behind the subject leaves, but I found it a bit confusing because there was not enough difference in color between the foreground and background foliage.

The image below seems more successful because the subject leaves do not get lost against a similar-hued background.

The best shot of this group, I thought, was the following, which shows more diversity of color.

John

KATYDID

This morning, coming back from a walk, I saw what I thought was a leaf stuck to the side of the stone entrance to our home but that was actually a katydid that was very lethargic because of the cold (around 40 degrees).  I brought the katydid inside hoping to take a few pictures with my macro lens.  This proved more difficult than I anticipated.

My plan was to use my tripod, hoping to get closeups of the katydid from various angles.  But in the warmer environment of the house, the katydid began walking determinedly toward the edge of the table on which I had placed it.  This meant that the tripod simply wasn't going to work, as the insect kept moving out of the focal plane.  To compensate, I ramped up the ISO to enable a faster shutter speed and got the following shots that were in fairly good focus.

These were taken at an ISO of 2000 at f/20 for 1/15th second.  The tripod eliminated camera shake but didn't keep the insect from moving.  Even at a slow pace it was generally not possible for me to keep the insect's eyes in good focus.  Still, not too bad.

I then moved the insect back outside onto the black plastic cover or our cooking grill.  The lower temperature slowed the insect down, which helped some.  I also abandoned the tripod, realizing that it was better to take handheld shots at a significantly higher ISO.  There was more ambient light on the deck, which helped with shutter speeds.

The above shots were taken at an ISO of 5000 and an aperture of f/25.  Shutter speeds were at 1/50 and 1/125 seconds.  Because of the relatively strong light, the higher ISO did not create much "noise."

I did want to take some shots looking into the katydid's "face."

Here I focused on the insect's eyes and let the remainder of the body fall out of focus.  The above shots were at an ISO of 5000 and an aperture of f/14, with a shutter speed of 1/320 second.  I liked this last shot best.

Here is a cropped closeup of this image showing the katydid's face.  Note what appear to be dust motes on the insect's eyes.

Katydids are a great example of evolutionary mimicry, as the insect's wings have a very leaf-like appearance, including shape, coloration, and veining.

John

BURR OAK ACORNS

Occasionally, on my morning walks I pass by a stately burr oak on the grounds of a modest Lutheran church about a mile from home.  The oak is old and majestic, but, perhaps because I tend to walk with an eye to the ground, what I found more interesting were the thousands of acorns that the oak drops each fall and that were littering the ground beneath the tree.  I saw them as an opportunity for my macro lens.  Here is what I got.

I love the frilly caps that the acorns are sporting, even though they seem out of character with the masculine persona of the oak itself.

John

RETURN TO MITCHELL PARK DOMES

The Mitchell Park Domes is Milwaukee's premier horticultural conservatory, and I have visited it many times, primarily to do macro photography.  Admittedly, on my previous visit, several months ago, I found very little in the way of new opportunities.  However, I decided to return this last weekend to see if there were any changes that might catch my interest.  I did find a few new opportunities, and this is what I shot and  kept.

First, an old scene of a bed of flowers, of which there are many in the conservatory's Show Dome.

Nice, but of course not new.

The following, also in the Show Dome, was one of several examples of a ball-shaped flower that I had not seen before.  What I liked was not the overall flower but the texture that the petals created as a semi-abstract.

The image shot is probably 2" by 3", and the overall ball was probably 5-6" across.  I actually softened up the petals a bit in post processing to give the overall image a smoother appearance.  Just OK, I thought.

I found the following flower, probably 3-4" across, in the Desert Dome and my recollection is that there was just this one specimen that was in bloom.

I cropped the flower to show less than the entire bloom.  I somehow felt that this gave the image more interest.  The petals were more three-dimensional than appears in the photo, with the tips at least an inch closer to the camera than the flower's center.  I focused on the center of the flower, which meant that the tips of the petals would be badly out of focus at a normal aperture, so I narrowed the aperture in this case to f/25.  That brought the greenery in the background into play, and is part of the reason I cropped the shot down to emphasize the flower.  I liked the flower particularly for its clean and simple elegance and rich orange color.

A new plant, also in the Desert Dome, I had not seen on previous visits was the following member of the cactus family.  The plant was sausage-shaped and perhaps 2-1/2" in diameter by 6-7" long   I had a difficult time trying to figure out how to capture the peculiar "whiskers" that the plant exhibited.  Because the plant was upright and very close to the ground, I got lazy and decided to shoot it looking down from the top.  I probably should have looked for other ways to shoot it, given its unusual appearance.  Next time, perhaps.

Finally was a leafy plant in the Tropical Dome that I had shot a few years ago.  This specimen was a much lighter green than previous times.  This plant is also low-lying, so I had to position my camera less than a foot off the ground--not easy with a tripod.

The image included here, of a portion of one of the leaves, was perhaps2"x3".  The leaf, which was the best example of those reasonably available to my camera, was pretty beat-up, but maybe that added to its "character."  I did like the image as a semi-abstract.

John

HOLY HILL PILGRIMAGE

This week I made what has become a more or less annual fall photo pilgrimage to Holy Hill.  The Holy Hill National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians, is a Roman Catholic church located in the Town of Erin, about 40 miles northwest of Milwaukee.  It has been designated a minor basilica by the Catholic church.  Built in the 1860s, it is a lovely church constructed on a spectacular site.  My sense is that the designation is baed more on its setting than on its architecture.  Located on one of the highest points in southeastern Wisconsin, the site is surrounded by woods-covered rolling countryside, making for spectacular fall colors.  Here is a ho-hum shot of some of that color foliage.

First, the basilica's exterior.

There is a smallish pavilion outside the building.  However, at the back of the pavilion is a wall and beyond the wall is a sharp drop-off.  As a result, this is as much of the building as I could capture, even with my wide-angle lens, which cut off the tops of the basilica's twin steeples.

The exterior includes some very nice features.  Here is detail surrounding the main entrance.

And the prominent statues on either side of the rose window above the main entrance.

Now to the interior, beginning with a wide-angle shot of the sanctuary from the real of the nave.

As with most Catholic churches, one of the major highlights is the sanctuary and apse.  Here is a sequence of shots ending with a closeup of the mural in the apse.

Very nice, I think.

I took the following shot from the front of the nave, looking back toward the main entrance.

Here is the shot I got of the rose window above the balcony.

I tried a photo of the nave ceiling.

Unfortunately, the ceiling is not particularly interesting.  I did manage to include some of the side stained glass windows.  Still, the shot came out pretty awkward looking.

The side windows are nice, but not stunning, at least in my humble opinion.  Maybe I'm jaded.

What were interesting, in my view were the ornate side pillars, which included interesting faces carved into the pillars' tops.

Anyone, particularly those who have a strong Catholic faith, who is visiting the Milwaukee area would enjoy a visit to Holy Hill, but she or he should be prepared to do some climbing of stairs up the hill to get to the basilica.

© 2018 John M. Phillips