As a child many, many years ago, I loved autumn. Autumn meant cooler temperatures that, in turn, meant all the major holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas) were just around the corner.
I’ve since outgrown a lot of the things I used to enjoy as a child (whether that is a good thing or not is another subject entirely), but autumn is definitely not one of them. It is still my favorite time of year but for some different reasons now. The cooler temperatures are still nice, maybe even more so. But now, they mean the world around me is about to erupt in color changing from the omnipresent greens of summer to the various shades of orange, yellow and red of the fall season.
Autumns in Arkansas are usually short-lived, or, at least, it feels that way. The sighting of the first red leaf to when most of those leaves have fallen to the ground seems to last no more than three or four weeks. That’s why, when the calendar flips to September, I start watching for the signs on a daily basis. If I want to get out and photograph beautiful autumn foliage, I have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice because, when one of Mother Nature’s greatest shows starts to play, it won’t last long.
I was beginning to wrap up my recent trip to Collins Creek in Heber Springs, Arkansas. I had been there for over an hour and a half and needed to get back home. But, before I left, I decided to take one last look around to see if there was anything else that piqued my interest. So, with camera and tripod in hand, I began to walk along the creek one more time.
Stopping maybe twenty feet from where I had started, I decided there was nothing else really catching my eye, so it was time to call it a day and go home. As I looked down to make sure of my footing, something caught my attention. Looking again, I realized it was an oak leaf that had fallen from one of the surrounding trees into the space between two rocks.
Upon further inspection, I could see that it had begun to change color from green to orange. I had seen my first sign of Autumn! My excitement began to build and is still building for that matter. I quickly set up my camera and tripod and zoomed into the longest focal length, 70mm, I had on the lens I was using and pressed the shutter button.
Getting home, I opened the picture on my computer and . . . disappointment. I discovered that some of the foreground rock was not as sharp as I wanted it to be. In my rush to get the shot, I didn’t pay attention to just how close that foreground rock was to the lens, and, using a 70mm focal length, I just didn’t have enough depth of field to ensure the entire image was sharp. To add insult to injury, it wasn’t like the leaf was going to run away. I’d had plenty of time to check everything; I just didn’t. As the old adage goes, haste makes waste. And, once again, the truth of that saying was on full display.
But, as I examined the photograph further, I realized the lack of sharpness appeared to be in only one corner of the frame, and I could crop the picture to eliminate that one slightly out of focus area.
And that’s what I did. I ended up cropping the image by just over fifty percent from 30.1MP to 13.7MP, which was far more than I wanted to do. I then ran the picture through Topaz Gigapixel AI, which did a fantastic job of resizing the file to its original 30.1MP resolution creating this final image.