Fall

When Fox Valley Photography Group leader Bobbi Hague announced this month's theme, she defined it as a broad interpretation of Fall, not just the classic leaf-peeping. It took me a while to get started addressing the theme directly, so the leaves were no longer prime peeping anyway. I loaded the Variable Cuboid with a roll of Portra 160 from a film experiment phase last year and started with the wide angle 80° 35mm front.

The apples on the crabs next to Millers Bay were still contributing to the autumn palette.

It was not all that late in the afternoon, but the November sun was already at the low angle photography textbooks speak about. Further down Millers Bay, this tree was classically past peak with a few brown leaves but was in the dappled shadows of trees behind the camera.

Next to Lake Winnebago, a few trees retained their leaves, part yellow, part still green and part bicolored making the transition.

I know these are crabapples next to the bibliothèque, but I can't help myself titling this "Liberry."

Dense clouds covered the sky for days, but there was a moment of partly cloudy one morning. I switched to the 53° 60mm front and went out into the similarly past peak garden. Two brightly colored oak leaves with a mysterious bunch of multicolored berries were behind the raised beds. They were right on the ground, which required lengthy wrestling with the remnants of the pumpkin vines to adjust the tripod. I never noticed the bright yellow plastic connector. 

Looking around during that minutes-long exposure, two still bright maple leaves were lying among the lungworts. More skillful tripodology, this time a few inches above the ground. As I closed the shutter, I finally noticed they were made of fabric with clear plastic stems. Someone's decorations took a bad hit from the wind.

There hasn't been a cabbage report this year since they have been beneath pumpkin leaves all summer. Stayed alive, but not going to make anything for me to eat.

The dangerous roses on the arbor have made copious hips. This is about 1:2 super-macro with the camera just about 30mm away. Those diffraction equations show optimal performance with a smaller pinhole for subjects extremely close up. We may be experiencing that here. Or the plant shifted a tiny bit in a slight breeze.

It was late morning when these were done. I usually notice the light on this lantern while we're having lunch, and the garage is in the way by the time we're done. The vines had been a spectacular classic autumn crimson in recent weeks.

Flowers are not classic Fall icons, but the Christmas Cactus has been showing off a bit early. 

After several more very gloomy days, I returned to a typical autumnal theme. All those vines produced these three orange pumpkins and all the little gourds. The exposure read 17 minutes when the shutter was opened, but when that was over, it said 41 minutes, so I just left it another hour until after dark. It was still extremely underexposed but recoverable. 

No respite from the gloom. The Christmas Cactus in the directional diffuse light on the lanai again caught my eye. Check out the interference pattern between the screens and the shingles on the neighbor's roof. I can see it in the negative, so it's not a Newton Ring from the scanner. 

The 35mm front on the Variable Cuboid has a .23mm pinhole. The 60mm front has a .30mm pinhole. Both are hand-drilled and mounted on a rising front with 11mm of travel. The Portra 160 was developed in an Arista.edu liquid quart C41 kit.