Most of the trees have given up their colorful leaves by now, but one hardy young tree refused to do so and looked almost like it was on fire in the early morning yesterday at Huntley Meadows Park.
The tree really stood out and grabbed my attention and I wanted somehow to capture its beauty. Many of you know that I have very limited experience with landscape photography and I simply wasn’t sure how to approach this atypical subject.
My first instinct was to zoom in closely and fill as much of the frame with the details of the tree as I could. That’s my favored approach with both my macro and zoom lenses. I was shooting over a field of cattails and across a pond and my first series of images looked like this one.
I moved further down the boardwalk and decided to try to capture more of the surrounding environment by shooting in landscape mode. I also tried to get a clearer view of the beautiful reflections my moving beyond the cattails.
In order to get a different view, I climbed up the observation deck and took some shots like this one with various objects in the foreground and some reflected sky showing at the bottom of the image.
I presented the images with only a slight amount of cropping to give you an idea of what I was going for as I “worked” this subject. How did I do? In my view, the middle image is by far the best and serves as a reminder to me that stepping back and zooming out can be beneficial. More importantly, perhaps, I can see the benefits of trying out different approaches and different subjects as a way of stretching and learning and, hopefully, growing in my skills as a photographer.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
I loved seeing these standout fireballs Mike. Great photos. Thanks for climbing up to get the last one.
On the bottom photo it almost looks like the bigger trees are creating a barrier around the smaller one thus giving a sense of protection. But they all look great though.
Sometimes to my shock, closer is not better. Good work to find better shots.
Thanks, Lyle. I am shocked too when that happens. I almost never pull back on my zoom lens–it’s almost always fully extended.
Nice work, Mike. I love what you did with that third one. Landscape photographers say you should have foreground, mid, and background interest. To get them all in focus sharply, focus at the hyper focal distance (approx 1/3 of the distance between you and the background), and use a high f-stop (e.g., f-11 or higher). A tripod helps of course, especially in the low light that you had. All of which you seemed to achieve in that last shot!
It’s interesting, Sue, that you pretty much described the process that I used for the shot. My settings were f/14, 1/60 sec, ISO 250, lens at 150mm. I used the railing of the observation deck as a surrogate tripod and focused approximately halfway the distance between me and the trees. I knew that the only way I could get the kind of foreground elements that I wanted was to shoot in portrait vice landscape format. Generally 150mm is not optimal for landscape, but it kind of worked here.
You did well Mike – my favourite is the last one. That tree really is on fire and its reflection in the water are nice.
I like all three but the first one makes it seem like a sunbeam was illuminating just that tree because it was so beautiful. It grabbed your attention, so it must have worked! I love it when that happens.
It’s definitely amazing when you see that kind of beauty that is set off so wonderfully from its surroundings.
I agree with you – I think the middle one is the most striking composition. Really accentuates the tree and its fiery beauty without distraction.
Thanks.