Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Variations on a stream
Leaf and Rocks, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
5 seconds
F/11
ISO 200
100 mm
In my November 4 post, I wrote at length about a recent morning spent photographing a single leaf I found plastered to a rock beside Bridalveil Creek in Yosemite (and my feelings about staged scenes). While my entire shoot that morning was all about one found leaf, it was just the latest in a long succession of focused visits to Bridalveil Creek. Each time I visit here the creek is different: In spring Bridalveil Creek spills into three distinct branches, each bulging with rushing snowmelt; most autumns, the creek has shrunk one branch, a trickle of its former self, decorated with yellow leaves; in winter the banks are lined with snow and ice crusts the surface. On each visit I usually choose a scene and work it to within an inch of its life. On this most recent morning I spent an hour photographing this one leaf, making sure I left no shot un-shot: Multiple lenses, a range of focal lengths, horizontal and vertical orientation, and a variety of perspectives.
Here are more samples:
Here’s the version of the leaf I featured in my November 4 post. I started with wider compositions and gradually moved to tighter frames like this one. (If I were one to arrange leaves in my scenes, I might have been tempted to place one about where the pine needle sits on the rock opposite the leaf.)
Here’s the same image rotated into a vertical. Whenever possible, I like to horizontal and vertical version of each scene I photography, but rarely do they come out identical because each orientation requires its own crop. But an advantage of photographing a scene from directly above is that there’s no top or bottom to the scene. To make the horizontal scene into a vertical, I could have rotated my camera 90 degrees and re-shot, but it was much easier to simply rotate the image in Photoshop.
Shortly after I started working on the scene, a breeze kicked up and deposited a green leaf right on top of the pine needle mentioned above. Not only was it a not particularly photogenic leaf, it was upside-down (clearly I need to work on my powers of telepathic manifestation). But rather than knock the rogue leaf into the creek, I included it in my composition, capturing several frames before the breeze returned and did the dirty work for me.
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 
Cool!
The top one is my favorite…I like that there is 3 rocks in the image…seems more harmonious somehow.
All 3 photos resonate with me. I can see a grouping on the wall of my office. Well done.
Thanks, Dianne. (And that certainly can be arranged.). 🙂
Hi Gary – Re the lonely leaf that landed upside down, I would have felt sorry for it and done just exactly what you did, in the notion that perhaps it was a gift 🙂 These are such wonderful pieces…Although the word is a bit overused, a really lovely Zen feeling accompanies all of these. They are wonderfully meditative. I really like the Nov 4 shot too but I am most intrigued but the one you rotated and the one that has the stream running from top right to bottom left and rocks diagonally opposed…What a wonderful feel that one has. I agree with the writer above – all of these would make a beautiful wall arrangement. Hope you are doing well – sorry for my patented long-winded speech here 🙂 Cheers sir!
Thanks, Denny. I always appreciate your “long winded” thoughts.
Thanks, Denny. I think my favorite is the November 4 image too, but it’s interesting to read people’s reactions to both of those images.
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Brilliant!