|
The autumn of 2003 was a busy time for me, with two book projects to finish up, workshops, a web site to build, and other demands of "real life" leaving little time for photographic field trips.
As the cool breath of autumn heralded the transformation of the trees in our garden, I found my eyes drawn more and more to the ever changing colors of the leaves and the metamorphosis of the lush greens of summer into fall's brilliant splashes of red, gold and orange. As the tapestry unfolded with each new day, I found that I didn't need to travel far to find wonderful subjects for my camera, for they were all around me and I needed only look out the window of my office to see a perfect sunbeam illuminating a sculptural leaf or casting shadows through the exposed lattice of the dogwood branches.
Close to Home is a meditation on the changing seasons as seen in the trees and plants of my backyard and the street where I live. I use the word meditation because that is how it felt to me as I spent the weeks with camera in hand looking closely, watching the subtle nuances of the quickly changing light and rediscovering my familiar surroundings. It is also an exploration of finding subject matter where we often don't think of looking, close to home, in the places we see every day, but so often pass by on our way to other destinations. All of the images in this collection were taken in my backyard, or a short walk from home.
For those interested in the technical details, I used a Canon 10D with a 50mm f1.4 lens and an image stabilized 28-135mm f3.5-f5.6 zoom. All images were captured as RAW files. Beyond some minor contrast and color adjustments applied in Photoshop CS, these are "straight" photographs.
--Seán Duggan
|
|
Click the leaf
to enter the gallery
|
