On several occasions I have been complimented on what I write to accompany my photographs. I sincerely thank those people who have shared those compliments. The enjoyment I get through sharing photographs I have taken is through posting, most often a single image, something I have found interesting or beautiful that tells a bit of a story. My hope in including prose that goes along with a photo is to enhance the story that the photo illustrates. Raised, as I was, with weekly access to Life, Look, and Nat Geo magazines in which I rarely read more than the captions, I lean on short descriptors that help explain what I saw or felt when I shot the picture. Today I depart from that and go longer form to share a little more about what motivates me to get out and photograph whatever I find gets my attention. On CBS News Sunday Morning today Ken Burns, the documentary film maker, was interviewed about an upcoming PBS series he has made on Leonardo DaVinci. Little known fun fact, I was in Ken’s same class at Hampshire College in MA in the early 1970s. While we pursued very different career paths the student body was very small and we all at least knew of each other. Perhaps because we were in the same class at Hampshire I have paid attention to Ken’s work. He mastered a film technique of putting action into a still photograph by zooming or panning a two dimensional image. He tells the story he wants told in an incredibly imaginative and engaging way. His work is inspiring and he communicates and innovates in a very rarified, elite world of visual communicators. He inspires. My simple effort to share and communicate dwells in the basement of his house, if even that. That said, I do enjoy sharing the world I see and the wonderfully varied world of nature. My studies at Hampshire College ranged from ecological systems to animal behavior to forest management to canids re-emerging in New England to coastal geology. Yes, Hampshire encouraged the broad brush approach. I consider myself a science and nature geek with a passion for photography.
All that intro brings me to what I find fascinating and graphically beautiful about these leaves. Fall days with shorter sunlight hours and cooler temperatures signal deciduous trees to shut down chlorophyll production. With the loss of photosynthesis and, therefore, chlorophyll the green in leaves disappears and red, orange, yellow, and brown emerge, dependent upon what tree species it is. These colors were in the leaves but were not revealed until green was gone. What is also interesting is that trees have hormone changes that result in reabsorption of nutrients from the leaves. I believe these two leaves were photographed in the middle of that process as chlorophyll pulls away from the outer edges and is being reabsorbed through their veins. Ok class science lesson for the day is complete I hope you enjoyed it.
