November frost
As November nears its close of another year, I am reminded again of the change in focus of subject matter that happens this time of year. Color is certainly scarce now in Michigan. Deciduous trees are mostly bare, and many plants show their signs of drying up awaiting the weight of winter snow to bring them to the ground. Subject matter doesn’t exactly jump out and slap you in the face now like it does in the peak of fall color. It takes a bit more of a careful eye to see the interesting things that are still around.
Frosty mornings are becoming more frequent. We haven’t had too many mornings yet that have dipped below freezing yet, but this morning was one of them. Open areas had a good bit of frost and I noticed fog in the air on the pre-dawn dog walk. I felt inspired to get out the camera today for first light.
The woods near my home are a bit of a graphical mess as I have mentioned before – thorny thickets and tangled poison ivy vines everywhere, fallen trees scattered about. Even with the simplifying nature of fog, it can be difficult to do many scenics. So I turned to macro photography, looking for interesting elements that caught my eye. The frost pattern on this leaf was one of them. So many questions come to mind when I see something like this. Why did the frost form in this way? The leaf appears exactly as I found it lying on the ground. Why did other leaves right next to it have no frost at all? Isn’t it interesting that the frost pattern is in the shape of a tree, or a branch?
Curls of Goldenrod
Then I spotted the curly nature of drying goldenrod stalks and their leaves. Quite interesting graphically, so I photographed them. I don’t normally pay much attention to goldenrod stalks when they are showing their vibrant greens because the shapes don’t seem as interesting. “Dead” things sometimes make better subjects – go figure!
I didn’t make it very far into the woods. I probably made most of the images this morning within an area of 20 square feet. Such is the case with macro and exploring details on a November morning. The closer you look, the more you discover. Certainly when I see these images, I think November.
The images in this post were processed by Adobe Lightroom 2, luminosity masks in Photoshop CS3, and use of the Topaz Detail plugin. Original captures made with a Nikon D700 and a Nikkor 200 mm micro (macro) lens at ISO 400.
