Too Much Sun
I was in Seattle earlier this week and stopped by the Washington Park Arboretum to see what I could find. It was what most people would call a glorious day, full sun under a brilliant blue sky and pleasant temperatures. Fall color hadn’t started happening yet and very little was in bloom. In short, the conditions were less than prime for my kind of photography.
I wandered down to the end where they’re constructing the new Pacific Rim Connections garden, which still had a fence around it and wasn’t open yet. But across the road I was struck by the pattern of the shadows a large Madrona tree was casting on the lawn. That’s not the picture here, but it’s what got me started down a different path that day. I made several images of the shadows on the grass, then headed up Azalea Way back toward my truck.
Along the way I noticed the light coming through the leaves of a large tree. When I aimed my camera the lens was set for a much closer distance and I saw something similar to the photo here — just a soft pattern of branches and greens. I experimented with several variations of focus and aperture. This is the one I liked best out of the bunch.
It seemed odd to use one of my sharpest lenses to shoot a totally out-of-focus photo, but that’s what I did. Sometimes I have to remember to play and not to get hung up on what’s “right” and what’s “wrong” in photography. Thanks, David for reminding me of that a few days earlier.