Autumn Leaves

I don't know about you, but I think the leaves are absolutely gorgeous this fall.  I don't remember them being this beautiful last year.  Or perhaps I'm just more aware of them this year ... looking for photo opportunities.  :)

Did you know that the fall colors - yellows, oranges, and reds - come from sugars produced by the trees?  Each type of sugar has its own color ... carotenoids are yellow and orange, while anthocyanins are red.  The reason we don't see these colors during the rest of the year is because they are masked by the green chlorophyll, which converts light from the sun into food for the tree.

As the days grow shorter and darker, less light from the sun is available, so the tree stops producing chlorophyll.  This allows the brilliant colors of autumn to shine through.  Eventually, these chlorophyll-stripped leaves cost the tree more to keep than they give back to it in energy, so it protects itself by producing a substance to seal off the leaves from the rest of the tree.  Eventually the nutrient-starved leaves fall off and die.

So there's your science lesson for the day.  While I'd like to take credit for all that wonderful information, it was actually taken from The Farmer's Almanac website.  :)  Here's another good article with more details on how/why leaves change color.  The kids and I will be talking about this tonight after school.

Speaking of leaves ... here are my edits for Shoot & Edit/Good to WOW!

I just did the usual simple edits in ACR on all 4 of these.  The only "extra" thing I did was on the photo of Alex with his walking stick ... I did a little dodging/burning on his face to make it a little brighter.  It was a little too shadowy for me.  It is still a bit dark, but I didn't want to overdo the correction.



Again simple edits in ACR, then I added Kim Klassen's Yesteryear texture twice and lowered the opacity on each layer until I liked the result.  You can mouse over the photo to see the clean edit.









I have wanted to try The CoffeeShop Blog's color bar template for a while now and this seemed like the perfect photo.  Although Liza seems a little scrunched so I'm wondering if I did something wrong.  I'll just have to go back and play some more.  Anyway, I love how the color bar pulls out the colors in the photo that you may not have noticed.




Last, just some more simple tweaks in ACR.  And I adjusted the white balance.  Mouse over to see the SOOC version.
     

To see more great leaf edits and to find out what Misty from Through a Photographer's Eyes has to teach us this week, head over to Ashley's.

Next week's Shoot & Edit theme is pumpkins.  That should be an easy one for me ... we have 18 of them decorating my deck!  It's like we have our own personal pumpkin patch.  :)


Hope you are having a wonderful day!  After a cold, rainy day yesterday, the sun has decided to peek out from behind the clouds for a bit this afternoon.  So I'm headed outside to enjoy it.  Have a great Thursday!

Tweet