Frosty mornings can present you with a lot of photographic material. With the recent cold snap in the NW I have taken the opportunity to get out a couple of mornings for some frosty shoots - once in the yard and a couple times out in the local areal. Frosty leaves and flora are a classic and I just can’t get enough of them.
What am I looking for when shooting frosted leaves or plants?
- Nice color – rich subtle hues or bright primaries.
- Simple compositional elements – oblique lines, circles, triangles, etc. without random crossing lines (like those caused by blades of grass). You might have to do a little finger pruning.
- Are the corners filled or balanced and symmetrical?
- Geometric pattern of color or just nice balance?
- Is there a single element that draws the eye within the apparent chaos?
- Nice frost.
Applying these to the blog images here is what we see in the first image:
- Rich brown tones.
- Diagonal composition formed by the leaves.
- The corners are symmetrical. If there were leaves in three corners and only one with grass it would feel unbalanced.
- Balanced with triangle in the corners.
- For me the leaf near the upper right attracted my eye.
For the second image (this will look nice as a large print):
- Beautiful mix of orange, yellow and green.
- No real strong compositional element but a strong repeated pattern. No rogue grass blades, twigs,etc.
- All corners are filled.
- The individual colors are evenly spread throughout the image maintaining balance. Look at each color and see the balance.
- For me the lighter green leaf cluster near the upper right caught my eye.
Was I thinking about all of this while shooting the images? Actually I was. It is pretty automatic now due to experience.
Posts
