Rage against the dying of the leaf

…with apologies to Dylan Thomas.

I was out in the garden yesterday, when suddenly, the light – already beautifully muted by the smoke from the fire in Paarl – caught this dying leaf on the Fatsia japonica. This photo needed to be taken, and once taken, needed to be placed into a square crop.

I did the biz:

Bit of a messy background – a smaller f-stop would have helped with that. That said, I was already on f/2.8. And I only had 30 seconds to run in, grab the camera and get the shot before the light was gone. First, get the shot, then make it pretty.

It’s still a constant learning curve, and so next time, some of that 30 seconds will be spent knocking the f-stop down to f/1.8. I’ll know what I need to do before I press the button.

But considering how brief the time was from finding this shot to it not being there anymore, I quite like this one.