Photo Techniques: Using Morning Light

I took a morning walk through a hardwood swamp this past weekend. The morning light dappled through the growing leaves of the cypress trees, bursting through in areas and highlighting parts of the scene.

A Tillandsia Setacea  or Southern Needleleaf airplant, sat in one of the pools of light, on the side of a tree. The normally green to red leaves of the plant appeared completely red. I took several shots, changing my angle and moving around, or "composing with my feet" as the photographers say.

With the light directly behind the leaves, and using the zoom lens set on aperature priority to blur the background, I finally composed the shot I wanted. Wisps of webbing fall through the needle-like leaves. The red leaves stand out with the green background and angle of the light.

Further down the boardwalk, the "baby spot lights" the sun created coming through the leaves shone on some individual buttonwood flowers, just in full bloom. The reflection of the sun in with the white flower washed out a lot of detail, and even using several different angles and settings I never quite captured in the camera the look I wanted.

I almost deleted all of them when I saw them on my computer screen. Instead, I decided to play around a bit with the Photoshop Elements settings, and produced a shot much closer to that in my head.

Looking closely at the photograph, I can see the affect of the setting on the original. I think I'll go back and try to get it right in the camera this time.