Autumn Leaves

For as long as I can remember, I have loved Autumn. So when I was walking around outside, I looked up at the trees and saw the contrast between the cloudy sky and the colour of the leaves...I used that opportunity to my advantage to take a picture.

For this picture, I really wanted the branches to break up the leaves so it wouldn't like a whole mess of colours popping out at you. The tools I used were the Aetherize tool, Gaussian Blur, and the Liquify tool. With the Aetherize tool, it brings more contrast to a picture than using the normal Brightness/Contrast tool. So, I used that to turn the branches from a dull brown to a pitch black to add an extreme contrast. With Gaussian Blur, I only really use that tool to soften a picture, and I did it with this one as well to give a dreamy effect to it. Now with the Liquify tool, I used that to create more branches because it looked quite dull without them and didn't give the photograph the complexity I was looking for.

As you can tell with the previous pictures that I have posted, I have been trying to "branch out" (no pun intended) with using a lot more colour in my pictures. I viewed this picture as adding to that idea, with using a lot more colour and using the beauty of nature into my photographs. With "Apples", "Altered Flowers", "Mr.Man" and this photograph, I am also trying to introduce a new subject which I have not used in the past into my "new and improved" repertoire.