As I was wrapping up my trip to Blanchard Springs and walking back to my truck, I spotted a tree with bright yellow leaves. My first thought when I saw it was that the leaves were just floating in the air like butterflies, and I wanted to try to reflect that vision in the final picture.
I set up my camera and tripod in the middle of a parking lot. That wasn’t too big of a deal, though, since there weren’t any other cars coming or going. I had been using my 100-400mm lens previously, and I decided to use it for this shot. Given the relatively short distance between me and the tree, the focal length would limit the depth of field which would keep the distracting background out of focus.
The wind had begun to pick up a little bit and was causing the leaves to move. Any movement when I pressed the shutter button and the leaves would be blurred. That obviously would have ruined the picture. So, I waited for a lull in the breeze. Fortunately, the breeze subsided, the leaves seemed to stop moving immediately, and I tripped the shutter and got the shot.
Opening the file in Lightroom, I added a significant amount of contrast and then darkened the shadows even further. This virtually eliminated the background, which was somewhat distracting, and hid most of the small twigs the leaves were still attached to. Finally, I increased the highlights and added some color saturation to further bring attention to the leaves.
This image is the final result, and it is the result I had in mind when I first captured the picture on my memory card. To me, it looks like the leaves are just floating. . .like butterflies.