Leaf Litter Photography

Golden syrup

A patch of fallen leaves with the early morning or late afternoon sunshine on them is a good start but you can't really tell what is going to work until you get down low. So much depends on angles. The same leaf photographed with the sun behind the camera, to the side or backlit makes such a difference.

Apricot

Boat

Kneeling is the next step and I carry a flattened cardboard box around the garden for the purpose. It really saves my knees/elbows/forearms from all the spiky little seedheads that are lying around in this dry season and are hard to see until embedded in your skin.

Brownie

Veins

Sometimes a leaf will call out to be photographed through its shape or colour or texture, always in combination with how the light is catching it. But looking good by itself isn't enough. For these images the blur of the foreground and background are just as important. I focus the camera on a leaf but my attention is usually more focused on its surroundings. For me, that is the bit that makes or breaks the image. Sometimes that main leaf is almost incidental and at times the part in focus is hardly visible.

Peaches and ice-cream

Dolphin

I love the blur and what it produces.

Having said that, some leaves do have enough personality to dominate the picture.

Sushi

Origami

As well as the cardboard I now walk around the garden also carrying a small bag of sand for my camera to rest on. It's not so much to reduce camera shake as camera drift. In other words it keeps the camera steady enough to get the exact composition I want - without it I was finding trying to use a telephoto lens whilst lying on the ground very awkward and difficult to prevent slow drift to one side or the other.

Omelette

Tectonic

I have given each picture a name, which is just my first reaction to the image, nothing serious. I guess when I did this I was a bit hungry as a lot of them seem to be about food!

Mince pie