Canon EOS 60D ,Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
1/320s f/8.0 at 23.0mm iso200

After a wine tasting near Los Altos last weekend, I was trying to get some interesting shots of the vineyards. In the area that was immediately accessible to visitors, I couldn’t quite come up with an interesting composition on a larger scale, so I decided instead to try a close up shot. The result is this Picture of the Week.

The colorful leaves are strongly backlit by the sun, such that the sun shines directly through the leaves and turns them into a translucent object. This really brings out the colors. At the same time, however, it is very important not to get any direct sunlight onto the lens, since that would lead to a dramatic decrease in contrast, would wash out the colors, and most likely result in ugly flare artifacts.

The solution was to carefully position the camera such that the direct sun is blocked by one of the branches. Post-processing of this image was fairly modest. I actually slightly decreased the overall contrast and boosted the shadow exposure, since otherwise some parts of the leaves would have come out too dark.