WC - 1st Place

Red Oak, Golden Waters

A couple of years ago I waded into the river as thousands of leaves drifted by on the current. As the Sun rose behind me, I was still in the shade of the trees on the east bank, while the trees lit up on the west bank. The reflections were like a fantasy, a dream. I came there to shoot the floating leaves, but the background created by the sunlit autumn leaves still on the trees made these images more than I expected to capture. In about an hour I made hundreds of shots. I ended up with enough keepers for an endless supply of triptychs, organized by background colors of gold, oranges, reds, greens and blues provided by the reflections.

Canon 50D; Canon 100-400mm.
1/200 sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your comments! Some members asked to see more from this sunrise leaf shoot with colorful reflections beaming at me while I was on the shady side of the river, so here's a link to "More Leaves in the River" which includes six more images like this, plus a link to "Aquarius," which is kind of a unique image from that shoot.