I really have to work to shoot images in the autumn. I enjoy shooting flowers and spent years attempting to become a modern day version of Georgia O'Keeffe. (Aim high, right?) However, by this time of year in the Northeast, my favorite flowers are either wilting or dead. Landscapes are especially difficult for me because they're so, well, "large." Again, I prefer detail and closeups. Consequently, I find landscape photography overwhelming: I see thousands upon thousands of unique, imperfect leaves rather than one tree. While I can capture "everyone's shot" of a landscape, I'm not in the business of making images that anyone else can make. I am convinced that a unique voice is one of the things that turns photography from a mere activity / pastime into an art.
To amuse, distract, and entertain myself between destinations, I opened the passenger window and shot slow exposures of the foliage and other landscape that seemed to be whizzing by as my husband drove us from town to town. After reviewing the results and aggressively editing out the weaker shots, I cropped the remaining images and adjusted the contrast in Photoshop. Here are some of my favorites:
I think it's interesting how they seem to be a mix of traditional and contemporary, representational and abstract. While the photos depict motion over time, it's motion on the part of the photographer, not the subject.
The end product is certainly unconventional. I really haven't seen other fall foliage images like this, although I'm sure there must be some out there. The "art" aspect of the process seems to be in the image selection, cropping, and editing process, as there's a lot of serendipity in what ends up on the original exposure. While I may experiment with "photographer motion during exposure" with other subject matters, it's unlikely I'll find anything to shoot as colorful as this.
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