Autumn

Continuing to be frustrated by my inability to take the kinds of pictures I'd like to I've been buggering about taking pictures of autumnal leaves. A terribly clichéd subject that is difficult to do anything new with. All the usual tropes get trotted out at this time of year. The single leaf, leaves floating on water, symbolic and metaphorical leaves. Usually perfect leaves - just golden or brown.

I've actually been struggling with this subject since late September. Making use of those few fleeting minutes when the sun is low in the sky to backlight leaves in the local wood. It's one of those frustrating things. The window of opportunity is small. The sun sets remarkably quickly once it reaches the right angle, and by the time I've worked through the crap ideas and started to get some better ones it has sunk too low. Then the following day it's either overcast or I can't get out in time.

Quite what I'm aiming for I don't really know. It's getting late in the year now and there are far fewer leaves around to work with. I guess the photos will have to get put aside with nothing to be done with them. But it kept the little grey cells active.

As the weeks wore on I got more experimental and pushed my uptight boundaries to get me out of my comfort zone.

I even broke out the flash gun to see what that might produce.

Distractions naturally occurred and my usual geometric style came back into play. Organising blocks and straight lines within a frame is where I'm most comfortable.

There was one other leaf picture I've taken recently which really doesn't fall into any of the usual autumnal pigeon holes...

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