20171017 Fall colours along Skerryvore Community Road and area

We took a detour to Skerryvore Community Road (off of Shebeshekong Road, down to the shoreline community of Skerryvore) on our way back from Parry Sound in late afternoon.  It was a good time to see various lighting (top, front, back, side) effects on the fall colours…..

This is the CPR crossing at Woods Road looking south, showing the effects of classical side lighting on leaves, the subject point at the end of the curve, and the cumuliform clouds.

Looking west, into the sun (which is hidden by that dark cloud) from Shebeshekong Road.  Always a challenge to preserve colour in such backlit scenes as an optimal exposure is difficult.

Looking southerly into a dappled driveway as the sugar maple burst of colour ends.  This is the first of several photos looking southerly as we headed westerly on Skerryvore Rd at around 4:00 PM.

Sunlight on a distant “haymeadow” as our sun side-lights the golden leaves remaining on a poplar tree.

Sun is poking out from the trunk of the tree on the right.  It is a useful trick to position the camera lens in a bit of shadow to shield it from excessive lens flare.  Another challenging picture to capture the colours — along with the brightly lit clouds and the shadows in the evergreens.

Oft-photographed tree trunks, this time enhanced by a brilliant red maple in a very high contrast (High Dynamic Range) situation…

Sun is high to the left,  side-lighting the distant colours:

The colour is very different as we head back easterly on Skerryvore Rd.  Here we are looking northerly, down sun:

Looking northerly, into downsun-dappled leaves …

Sun is high behind my left shoulder as I tried to highlight the red oak against the leafless birch on the side of this little creek:

A patch of sunlight highlighting the red winterberries against the shadow of the pines and spruce in the left mid-ground.  I often use some cover in the foreground to act as an architectural “negligee effect” —- in this case the tag alder branches in front of the little pond.  I often don’t know if it helps or not.  In this case it might be too heavy, tending to block rather than to entice.

As we head north on Shebeshekong road we try an experiment:  To capture the golden tamarack needles against the bright sunshine.

It’s a lot of fun playing with photons (aka light)!