It was only by happenstance that I found and photographed this small Autumn scene alongside my driveway late one evening. I had stepped outside for some reason that I can’t remember now, and it was beginning to get dark. Just as I was about to go back inside, I spotted a few colored leaves lying among the ivy. Without question, I had to photograph it.
With it getting darker every second, I ran inside to grab my camera, 24-70mm lens, and tripod. Getting back outside, I finally realized how dark it was and how quickly it was getting darker. I knew I had just a few short minutes to get the image.
I walked along the driveway and quickly found an area that had a nice grouping of colored leaves that were surrounded by the dark green ivy. As I set up my camera and tripod, I noticed something I had paid attention to before — a slight breeze that would occasionally rustle the leaves.
This created a bit of a problem because the light was so slow that I would need a long shutter speed no matter what aperture I used. So, I slowed down and got a feel for the breeze: how frequently did it blow, for how long, how much time between gusts. I thought if I could anticipate the air movement I could avoid any movement in the leaves.
And, this strategy worked. I knew I could use a long shutter speed without there being any movement in the leaves. I just had to time my press of the shutter button to coincide with the lull in the breeze.
Depth of field was also a significant factor to consider because the entire photo needed to be sharp, or it just wouldn’t work. To maximize depth of field I positioned my tripod so the plane of the sensor was as parallel as possible to the plane of the leaves. This would allow me to use a medium aperture to achieve as much sharpness in-camera as possible.
The breeze subsided. Since it was bordering on nighttime, my shutter speed was an interminable 30 seconds even at a moderate f/9 aperture. But, all I could do was press the button and hope for the best, so that’s exactly what I did. Later, when I looked at the file on my computer, I was a little surprised to find it had actually worked!
In Lightroom, I darkened the overall scene, decreased the luminance of the greens, and increased the luminance and saturation of the red, yellows, and oranges. Then, I added a vignette to further darken the ivy around the edge of the frame. Finally, I opened the picture in Photoshop and sharpened it using Topaz Labs’ Sharpen AI to get to this final image.