Redbud Leaf Revealed

Very interesting to see a leaf this close up. Bravo to you for working so hard to allow us to see something we usually don't see! Great comp, colors,and DOF. It does feel busy to look at; maybe the contrast could be toned down slightly. A touch more saturation would really pop the colors but then I like rich colors. Great capture, David!

David, isn't Mother Nature a wonder! It's great to see such detail and the back lighting is perfect so we can see the leaf structure. There is a photographer here in the Asheville (NC) area who photographs the molecular structure of a leaf or stem and uses that as a texture overlay on the photograph of the flower from the same plant. It's quite an interesting technique. Looking at your image made me think how that might work in the same way.

I'm not sure if it's acceptable for me to add this link, but here is a link to the write-up of her current exhibit at our North Carolina Arboretum called "Botanical Chords." Click here: http://www.ncarboretum.org/exhibits/terry-ashley

I found her work to be very interesting. The link will show you one of her pieces of work, but she has many in the exhibit.

Love the detail. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks to both of you for your interest and insights. I hope you get a chance to see this response.

Carolyn -- I looked again at live leaves today, backlighted by bright sunlight. The greens and reds are intense, although boosted a bit for posting. Out of curiosity I'll try juggling contrast and saturation as you suggest. The subject is busy all right, but I did not want to tinker with nature, at least not yet..

Barbara -- Thank you very much for putting me on to Terry Ashley's beautiful art/science photoography. I wish I could get to Asheville but I'll be traveling in the Northwest (with our son, a geneticist, pictured on my NPN Photographer page) and then in the Northeast throuugh mid-September. As a consolation, her website is excellent.

I already was thinking (vaguely) of combining macros with other images of the same plant -- your comments encourage me to go ahead. My field was metallurgy/materials science, including microscopy, so the combination of small scale and large scale photos intrigues me too. Hopefully I can eventually develop something both creative and informative.

Hi David,

So glad you had a chance to visit Dr. Ashley's website. There are so many possibilities for us to be creative with our images and it's great to see the work of others for inspirations. I'm glad I was able to post the link. Keep up the great work and we look forward to seeing more images.