image: terres rouges

Although well–composed focused shots of forests are interesting, if rather difficult to achieve, I find they are not so good for bringing out autumn colours.

I like autumn colours.

Here in Europe, those colours are less exciting than in North America. If I go too far in trying to bring them out, I’ll make the image look silly.

If a tree is obviously a tree, a tree with exaggerated autumn colours, and for that matter, exaggerated contrast, looks pretty awful. Actually, the excessive contrast works in black and white, but monochrome means no colour, with rather defeats the purpose.

Since I seem to have to lose something to make the image work, I decided to experiment with losing the trees by shooting the image way out of focus. The resultant shots still have a hint of the form of trees, but the broad composition utterly dominates the images now, along with the colour—the glorious colour.

For the results, see minettsgéigend photosets (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii) & (xiv).