I’ve learned over the past few years (or maybe less; I’m not sure. It feels like a while, but maybe it actually hasn’t been that long) that one type of image I really enjoy taking is that of a backlit leaf in the early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is shining through with such brilliance that it almost seems as though the leaf itself is its own light source. During midday, not so much, but if you can catch a leaf when the sun is low on the horizon, it’s basically the photography equivalent of a fireplace with a hot tiger tummy. There’s one small, subtle element in this picture I don’t often see though, and it elevates it beyond a lot of similar images I have taken in the past–I didn’t even notice it when I clicked the shutter button, but as I was going through my photo reel in Lightroom it was, in some ways, the only thing I could notice.
But I think I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.
Let’s start from the beginning here. I shot this when my brother and his kids were visiting recently, and we were all passing the afternoon together in my neighbor’s field. The kids were playing disc golf using trees and shrubs to score points, and the grownups were chatting and catching up on things–my brother and I with our cameras in hand. We came across a bush with some leaves still clinging to life and, with the sun lowering on the horizon, remarked at how they appeared radiant in a way that was simply not present earlier in the day. I crouched down, pointed my camera up just slightly, dialed in an aperture of f/8 on my 105mm macro lens, and fired off a dozen or so exposures of the green cluster you see in today’s photo. What really caught my eye was the transparent vertical slice on the main in-focus leaf; it gave me (and, hopefully, you the viewer) something to instantly draw my eye and, in a sense, command my attention. Other clusters of fully intact leaves weren’t as interesting, but this one with its bright spot in the middle caught my gaze in a way I didn’t really expect but very much appreciated.
What I didn’t notice, though, was the single strand of spider silk in the top-right corner. As I was looking through the shots after importing them into Lightroom, I noticed that almost all of them had a couple such threads–each catching the sunlight from a slightly different angle. I was surprised at how much those tiny, shiny slivers changed the entire composition. This one, in my opinion the best of the bunch, and I’m so happy with how that tiny line of light changes things. It makes the stillness of the leaves come alive, as if there is a bolt of microscopic lightning careening towards the greenery. Or a drop of rain falling from the sky. It’s just a strand of spider web, but it feels like so much more and I am so pleased to have been able to capture it in this picture.
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