HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Back in 2004 I visited Half Moon Bay and, at Farmer John's Pumpkin Patch, Farmer John himself showed me this eerie pumpkin. The scar on the side looks like a great horned owl with one wing outstretched. Farmer John also had some rather, um, "different" pumpkins hidden behind the counter that he also let me photograph, but those are best seen in a different blog! ©Carol Leigh

A walk around the block . . .

First of all, hello to June, Gisela, and Jill, who called me from a cafe in North Carolina just before I was headed out to walk. Crazy ladies . . . but I digress. This is a twig from a cedar tree (I believe) -- the road was littered with them. Since it was pouring rain during my walk, I didn't stop to shoot right there, but brought the twig home where I'd be warm and dry. The background is an old math book that I got at an antique mall -- bought it specifically to use the cover as a background and to use the pages in collage work.

I tweaked this picture a lot, clarifying and unclarifying it, blending the two, sharpening parts, then adding darkness around the outer edges. It's not a photomontage, but it comes kind of close. What I like is the overall richness of the colors, the warm fall look. ©Carol Leigh

Things that fall out of books

I found them in Santa Fe, stuck them into a book to dry, then rediscovered them yesterday. Aspen leaves. Reminders of fall in other places. I took a simple photograph. Very shallow depth of field so that just the middle of the leaf, where it meets (becomes) the stem is in focus. Meanwhile, we have 30mph winds and rain and hail and one rumble of thunder which sent the cat under the bed for hours. ©Carol Leigh

Fern close-up

Yesterday I brought inside a fern frond to photograph. Well, it looked better outside than it did when I began examining it up close inside. The weather's making the ferns look a bit weathered and tattered, and not in an "artsy" sort of way. So I zoomed in tightly to capture just a bit of it. I used a 50mm lens and a 35mm extension tube because that's what was on the camera. Usually I use this lens/XT combo to take shallow depth-of-field photos, but this time I set the aperture for f/11 to make sure everything was sharp. During the 1.3-second exposure, I waved around some brown leaves in the background to add color and shadowing. One light from the right lighted the fern, as well as track lights from above. ©Carol Leigh