Heroes Not Zombies

The opposite pole of my last post about taking the view from on high, is to focus on the particular.

In the autumn as the leaves reveal  an astonishing range of colours, one of the greatest delights is to look at a few, just one at a time. Yesterday morning, as the sun rose in the sky, I took a few photos of individual leaves as they caught my attention.

This one has beautiful yellows and reds in the one leaf. It was the contrast and range of colour which caught my eye, but as I look at the image now I see the sunlight shining through the leaf, and through the smaller green leaf close by. That sunlight surprise me because the leaf was lying on the ground but it looks as if the light is shining through from behind it. At first, that’s puzzling and draws me to look even closer. It shows how low the sun was in the sky, to be able to illuminate fallen leaves and grass from this angle…

This next one also grabbed my attention because of the colour. Such a rich, vivid red. But I was also instantly drawn to the shadows cast by the leaves of grass behind the leaf. They seem almost calligraphic – is that an “A” I can see there?

Having noticed the interesting effect of the low sunlight casting shadows behind the colourful leaves, I got down on the grass and photographed this one. Despite the fact this is  a two dimensional image, the shadows make it appear almost three dimensional (which, of course, it was when I was standing next to it!)

Finally, the sunlight making dew drops sparkle on the surface of a leaf always seems magical. What is it about water droplets that makes them so attractive? Every time they transform whatever they lie on in a way which reveals to us not just the beauty of the water, but of the surface it lies on.