How I Shot That - Clouds and a Falling Leaf

How I Shot That - Clouds and a Falling Leaf

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Sony a6000 / Sony 50mm f1.8

When the Fall comes, the weather gives us special opportunities.  One of these opportunities came from a set of trees in La Crosse that are nearly 100 years old.

Every fall, these few tall trees around Riverside Park shed their leaves.  It is the hight that gives me options.  And that day the clouds were spotty and the wind was just enough to rest the light collector away from the branch.  

Since it has so far to fall, the wind really carries it away.  I get enough space away from the tree to take that out of the frame.  And then I need to spend much of a day by this tree, running down leaves.  Sometimes I need to spend multiple days in order to get the photo I want.  This one, I had actually come back to the same place multiple afternoons to get the photo of a single leaf with the clouds in the background.

Something else that helped take this photo, was a new camera (at the time) that had a much better focus system than my old point and shoot bridge camera.  This was from my Sony a6000.  I used the 50mm f1.8 lens.  The a6000 was made as a starting sports camera.  So I was able to get my focus on the leaf pretty well.  I also had to shoot pretty fast.  So 11 frames a second was nice to have.

If you were to purchase this photo, the best way to do it justice would be on a large metal print.  Think 12x18.  That would be gorgeous.

American Queen visits La Crosse, WI - August 2015

American Queen visits La Crosse, WI - August 2015

Living in an area known as the Seven Rivers Region, La Crosse is influenced by life brought forth from the area's abundance of water.  And there are so many rivers here because it is known as the Driftless Area, an area where this part of North America avoided that last 3 glaciations.

Today, is obvious, that the Mississippi River brings the big tours from the big boats.  And this boat is the American Queen.  Probably the largest steam ship still operating along the Mississippi and its tributaries.  She seems to get all of the attention.  People come dressed in an Antebellum style.  They drive, bike, and walk into the park to get a view of the big boat.  And I'm pretty sure I saw other boaters slow down to take in the occasion.

To take this photo, I too had to slow down.  I normally like a detail shot that is zoomed in on a particular feature of a vessel such as this.  But we had clouds with a blue sky.  Wonderfully dressed up people and the obvious spectacle of attention that it was.  I was able to get a combination of 3 photos for this HDR effect.

You can look them up at www.AmericanQueenSteamboatCompany.com or on twitter @CruiseAQSC  and use the tag: #AmericanQueen.  Maybe we can convince them to join Instagram?

#riverlife #steampower #slowdown #mississippiriver #AmericanQueen #puffyclouds #lacrossewi #discoverwi #riversidepark #hdr #midwestmoment #summerontheriver #summertime