On Our Front Porch

A group of leaves in a shadowed area caught my attention this morning when I stepped outside on our front porch. They were buried behind two folding chairs that the wind had recently blown over. The brighter one on top of the darker, more colored leaves and the detailed veins inspired me to pull out my camera and start photographing. I made the brighter leaf my main subject and used the other leaves to frame it. I set the aperture to f/7.1 to maintain an appropriated depth of field which resulted in a long exposure time of 0.6 seconds. Needless to say that this was too long to hand hold and I had to find something to stabilize my camera. I did not need to look far when I found a nearby flower pot. I moved it close to the composition and combined with the house wall was a perfectly fine substitution for my tripod. I adjusted the polarizer to maximum impact that enhanced color saturation and minimized the blue glare of the cloudless sky. A slightly underexposed photograph at 2/3 stops kept the highlights and detail of the main subject from blowing out. In the digital post processing steps I minimally adjusted lighting, contrast and color saturation before sharpening the image.