October 30, 2013

Around and around the house the leaves fall thick—but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is somber and slow. Let the gardener sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. ~Charles Dickens

 

FOCUS:  Nature

Remember when you were a kid and you used to gather leaves in the fall?  You’d bring them inside and make impressions of them with crayons and paper.  Or you’d tie them together to make garlands, or press them between pages of a book hoping they’d last forever.  There is something about the beauty of autumn that makes us want to hold onto it – to capture it somehow and set it aside in a secret hiding place, so that when winter has cloaked us in its cold blues and greys, we can pull out our little treasure and experience those warm, vibrant colors once again.  Well that is what I tried to do today.  This is my secret stash of the season’s best.

From a technique standpoint, I once again explored using a scanner as my medium of photography (for my previous forays into this technique, see my posts here and here.)  Because scanners naturally have an extremely shallow depth of field, they capture 3-D objects in a dreamy, surreal way.  I thought that quality was perfect for imparting a touch of melancholy to today’s post.

Enjoy!