Simple ~ Thursday Challenge Image for 09.02.04

A Simple Leaf
My submission for this week's Thursday Challenge of Simple is a simple, single leaf. Friday last Jenne and I visited the birthplace of George Washington at Pope's Creek Plantation in the Northern Neck of Virginia. As we roamed the grounds of his colonial boyhood home we spotted this leaf hanging by a spider's thread and blowing in the wind. It really caught and held our attention. Look real close near the top center of the photo and you can see the thin thread. It reminded us a little of that scene in the film American Beauty where the plastic is blowing around in a micro cyclone.

This simple leaf hanging about six feet off of the ground made for some interesting photographic challenges. It was a small randomly moving target. Focus had to be manually set, the depth of field needed to be fairly deep to insure focus, but not so deep that the background would be in focus. I wanted the leaf to really stand out against the background of bright green mown lawn. Because I was so close to the subject this wasn't much of a factor. The shutter speed also had to be a relatively fast; again to insure focus. For my fellow photo geeks the settings on the D70 were as follows; 1/200 sec, f-16, ISO 200, manual exposure and focus. I shot four total images. The simple image above is presented full frame with no cropping and no color saturation. The only work done in Photoshop was a little color balancing, and adding a virtual black matt and my copyright. I know that earlier in the week I promised images of historic Christ Church for this week's challenge, but I didn't have the time to work on the images and I think the leaf fits the theme much better.