The Artful Engineer

As I continued my one-day photographic road trip around New Hampshire, the rain tempered a bit, but the skies were completely cloudy the entire day. I usually don’t complain about the light—different lighting conditions just give you different things to work with. Since there was no direct sunlight, backlit leaves weren’t going to be on the menu, but the low-contrast lighting was great for showing the myriad of colors. But it also meant that it was generally best to keep the sky out of the frame because it was usually a bright, featureless, distracting mass. With everything being wet from the rain and the bright sky above, I used a polarizer (or combined neutral-density/polarizer) most of the time to cut the sheen off the leaves and bring out the underlying color.

All of the images in this post were taken looking across or down rivers and streams. There are a couple advantages to doing this. The big one is that it is a lot easier to find an unobstructed view of whatever it is you are trying to photograph. For example, in the image above, I thought the leaning tree was interesting and would make a good subject— the fact that I was shooting across the river meant I had a clear view. As a bonus, the rocks in the river made a nice foreground. (The other common place to get a view like this is across a road, but roads are usually not very attractive.)

The crazy-red tree below was another standout subject that was easy to see across the river. I am sure that there are more trees like this back in the woods, but even if I found one it would be crowded on all sides and I wouldn’t be able to make a full-length portrait like this:

This next image is one that I am almost happy with. It’s not bad, but in retrospect I wish that I had zoomed in on the bottom left of the image: I think an image that showed those washed-up leaves filling the upper left half of the frame and the similarly-sized rocks filling the bottom right half of the frame would be really nice. But it didn’t occur to me at the time. It was still early in the day and I was still feeling a little rushed to get as much as I could out of the day; if I had slowed down a bit, I am sure I would have seen a lot of worthwhile compositions that I missed. The other distraction, as it happens, was that the rocks I was maneuvering on were quite slick. The water was only about two feet deep, but I did not want to end up soaked to the waist for the next six or seven hours.

I really liked this cozy little scene, especially the orange leaves on the rocks. I find the sharp “V” made by the outer two mini-cascades to be really interesting—it seems like the two flows should push each other apart more than they do.

The collection of vibrant trees on the far bank of this next image is almost like a collection of cartoon characters…or maybe the Seven Dwarves. Again, I think the rocks make a nice foreground (and the swirling bubbles are a little bonus in the bottom left corner for the attentive viewer). I am tempted to remove the little bit of yellow tree encroaching on the left edge, but regardless I think this could make a nice large print.

This next image is another favorite from the day. It was a two-frame focus merge: one frame focused on the rocks (and tiny waterfall) and a second frame focused on the background trees. My one regret, however, is that I did not take a third image focused even closer: there is another large boulder just out of the frame on the right that is distractingly blurry when included. There is also another nice boulder just off the left edge: that one is in focus, but when I crop in on the right the image looks unbalanced unless I crop in on the left, too. I really like this square version, but there are some nice trees to either side that get thrown overboard in the process. Oh, well…I am still happy with the result and think it, also, would make a nice print on the wall.

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Next week I will wrap up my busy day in New Hampshire before pressing on to fall color elsewhere.