The Best Part of Fall Might Be at Your Feet

When the fall color is good, I catch myself walking with my head up the whole time. I’m looking for that one tree that’s doing more than all the others, or a bend in the trail where the color comes together. Then something small catches my eye, and pretty soon I’m down on one knee photographing a leaf. Anybody walking by probably wonders what the heck I’m doing. Fair enough. From where they’re standing, it’s just a leaf.

This leaf caught on the trunk on its way down. I remember looking at it and thinking, Well, you’re not quite ready to let go, are you? It had spent all that time up in the tree, and here it was hanging on for a little longer. Eventually it would make it to the ground, break down, and give a little back to the soil around the very tree it came from. For now, it had a pretty good spot.

I love the color against that dark background and the contrast between the leaf and the rough bark. But the part I keep coming back to is that skinny red stem. Follow it up and you can see where the leaf caught. That’s the detail I wanted to keep in the picture, because it’s what got me thinking about the leaf and the tree in the first place.

When something catches your eye, give yourself a second to figure out what made you stop. Then look through the camera or at your phone screen and see if that part is easy to find. Sometimes shifting a few inches is all it takes to put a dark background behind the detail you want people to see.

Take a few seconds with this one. My eye goes to the pink edge first, then follows those little veins across the leaf. See anything else?

Down in the notch on the right, there’s a little spider. Once you find it, see where your eye goes the next time you look at the picture. That’s one of the things I love about working close. The color gives you a reason to stop, and there’s more there if you give yourself a few seconds to look. Next time you’re photographing a leaf, follow its edge all the way around before you move on. You might find a thread of silk, a ragged little opening, or somebody hanging out under the edge.

I was hiking through these incredibly lush woods in New Hampshire when this little group of mushrooms jumped out at me. The amber caps against all that green moss got me to stop. Once I got low, I could see the gills under the caps and that one little mushroom growing by itself farther down the log. I made this one with my phone and used a Lume Cube LED panel to fill in a little warm light underneath.

If you find something like this, take a picture from where you first notice it, then lower your phone until you’re looking across at it. You can even turn the phone upside down to get the lens a little lower. Watch how much of the underside you can see and how the background changes. If you’re adding light, start with just enough to see the detail you were missing. I still wanted those mushrooms to feel like they were tucked into the woods.

On your next walk, pick one spot and give yourself five minutes. Make your first photograph of whatever caught your eye. For the second, change your height and see what that does to the picture. For the third, photograph a detail you only noticed because you stayed a little longer. A phone and a single leaf are plenty to get started.

When you get home, put the three side by side and pick the one you’d keep. I’d love to see what you choose and hear what made you stop in the first place.

See you out there, Todd