The other day my wife and I sat on the patio and lamented the loss of autumn color in the backyard trees. A fairly good wind was blowing and it created a storm of falling pale yellow and brown leaves. Having spent a good amount of my time photographing the trees at the height of their color, I thought there must be additional photo opportunities coming out of this brown leaf storm.

As I looked on the patio around my chair I spotted one particular twig of leaves whose shapes and tones drew my attention. My immediate thought was a macro shot to capture some of the amazing details. I started walking around the yard looking for additional promising samples. Of course my wife thought I was crazy and just shook her head at me. I collected enough leaves to keep me occupied for a while as the weather gets colder, and today we had a chillier day with rain so I decided to try out my idea.

I took the twig to my “studio” (aka work shop) and I lit the subject with a single bulb through a white umbrella. I chose to close the lens all the way down rather than focus stack and I was rewarded with good focus throughout the image. The photo is essentially the way it came out of the camera, with just a touch of brightness added in post processing. The twisted leaves are part of that original twig that I spotted on my patio.