Blowing Leaves, Fluvanna County, VA #0827534

Is there enough sense of motion in this picture, or do you think I should

add some with photoshop? How about depth? Do you get a sense of

the leaves being in 3 dimensional space? Thanks

Leaves... ? Oh good, for a moment there I thought my head had exploded.

This does look a bit static, or as though time has suddenly stopped for a moment which I suppose it has. That cloud looks sort of like a Genie gazing down from above. Old man Winter?

Why photoshop this? Is there something very special about this particular moment or can you try doing a few more at various shutter speeds? Perhaps a wider angle lens would give it a more three dimensional look. If you want to pay to fly me out there I could throw some more leaves off the roof while you take photos. I also think some more colorful leaves are in order unless you decide to go for B&W. I think the leaves need to be more prominent in the frame or this needs to be viewed a lot larger. Some people might think you just don't clean your lens very often.

Sorry, it's too early in the morning for serious thought. ;-)

Dennis, your comments are appreciated whether you've had enough sleep, or not, and although your offer to come out on my dime and toss leaves off the roof of my house is tempting, I do think I will pass.

well, they were Autumn leaves, and that's a natural wind blowing them around at about 20 - 30 miles per hour--very gusty. The lens was 18 mm, so I don't know how more angle of view would do anything.

Maybe a slower shutter speed?

Maybe it's the light, the angle or quality, or maybe it's just asking too much. I'll post another one, for comparison, which has a larger leaf closer to the camera lens, and therefore "more prominent in the frame."

I think the view larger idea might be important, too, but I sense there's something in the image itself that should be able to communicate what I was going for at smaller sizes.

Thanks for your comment, groggy or not. I was about to relegate this picture to the permanent archive since it was apparently going by unnoticed.

I would not have guessed that this was taken with a wide angle. I guess I am looking for a near & far type composition to give it more perspective or depth. I think this is more of an issue with my expectations rather than the photo.

It seems as though I have thought about making an image like this before but I don't think I have ever actually gotten around to trying it or else I failed so miserably that it got discarded somewhere along the way. I'm pretty sure that if someone had to do this for an advertisement or some other commercial use that they would resort to some sort of composite image.

I hope I remember all this by the time Fall comes around again because I think it is a rather interesting idea. Probably a better idea (commercially successful idea) would be having an attractive blonde woman throwing the leaves up in the air and using a combination of fill flash and shutter drag to get both motion and a nicely exposed portrait. Maybe that would be too much of a cliche.

I would consider cropping this top/right to reinforce the diagonal composition with the cloud which I find to be the most interesting part of the image. I thought maybe a motion blur might add something but in the end I don't think my efforts made any improvement over the original.

Dennis, I'm sure the lens had a maximum angle of view of 18mm, but it was a zoom, so I'll check the meta data to see if it was set to a longer focal length. I made the picture lying on my back in my front yard with the camera pointed straight up as the leaves from across the street were whipped across the sky.

As far as depth, I was banking on the idea that since the leaves are all the same size, bigger ones would be rightly perceived as closer, smaller ones further away. Most shots were therefore unusable because there were no larger (closer) leaves.

As the leaves were moving too quickly, it was impossible to wait for the right moment, and I had to expose as many frames as possible when the wind kicked up, then look at the results later.

Panning didn't seem like the best approach, although maybe it would have been a good idea to try. I knew I had to stop the motion of (at least some of) the leaves) so they wouldn't be a complete blur, which is why I was asking about adding blur (selectively) in photoshop.

I like your ideas about the crop, the blur and attractive woman throwing leaves. The crop would essentially remove a good bit of unnecessary space. The blur is very interesting and really drives home a strong feeling of movement that is otherwise more subtle. the woman, clearly, would improve the shot whether she were in the frame, or not.