Project 365: Red and green and gold

You’d think if there were a weekly theme to the colours in my pictures the week before Halloween, those colours would be orange and black, but I’ve got more of a green and red and gold thing going on this week. Maybe it’s that whole “Christmas starts earlier each year” thing again? That seems to be a bloggy theme this week!

There was nothing Christmasy about our visit to Millers Farm to pick pumpkins, though! I am totally in love with their little pumpkin house – isn’t it great? (Except, it must be extremely crooked, because it’s still driving me a bit crazy that I couldn’t make all four sides of the frame line up with the edges of the photograph no matter how much I tinkered!)

302:365 The boys in the Pumpkin House

This is something a little different, but I love how it turned out – the reflection of autumn colours and late-afternoon sky on the Rideau River. I’m looking around for somewhere to hang this one in the house – but I’m starting to run out of wall space!

303:365 Autumn abstract

I’d like to hang this one on the wall, too. I found this little pile of vintage books in a corner of an antique shed and was immediately drawn to both the colour and the composition. I played with some Kim Klassen textures to finish it off.

304:365 Antique books

I have two leaf shots this week. (The leaf season is quickly coming to a close!) I’ve taken a bunch of leaves-on-steps shots over the last couple of years because my eye is always attracted to them — but I can never seem to make them work. My eye likes the subject but the camera apparently feels differently! Anyway, this is good enough, but only barely.

305:365 Leaves on the York Street Steps

This one has been done to death, by me and just about anyone else who likes to take pictures of autumn leaves (low hanging fruit!) but I still like how it came out. The sun is shining bright and low in the sky behind the leaf, giving it that nice glow and bringing out the detail of the veins and making the edges pop, but I kept the angle low to keep green grassy background completely framing the leaf and to keep the sun from flaring. I’m using my 50mm f1.4 lens “wide open”, which gives the grass in the background that nice smooth blur, but the plane of focus is so small that you can see the right edge of the leaf has wandered out of focus because I was focusing on the left side. It’s probably a difference of a couple of millimeters, but enough that it’s no longer as tack sharp as the other side. Oh well.

306:365 Autumn leafy goodness

Peppers from the Byward Market. I liked how the ones near the edges were mostly solid colours and the ones in the centre seemed to be the mixed-colour ones. Yum!

307:365 Peppers

And finally, if you know Ottawa you probably recognize this location. It’s the main entrance of the Canadian Museum of Nature, one of the city’s best places for families. In addition to the stunning architectural details on the door itself, I was drawn to the difference in scale between the very big door and the very little boy.

308:365 Big door, little boy

Think I can wrest a few more leaf and fall colour shots out of the season before the snow falls? Tune in next week to find out!

(Are you interested in the technical “how I did this” and “why I did this” explanations? Or are they pedantic? I can never decide what kind of details to include in these posts.)

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

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