Frost between coffee

Frost comes early to northern Wisconsin. It’s a herald. Things are changing. Shifting seasons. Shortening daylight hours. Sinking temperatures. It’s also pretty beautiful in its own right. These are all just a few steps away from my front door.

Because we pretty much only have deciduous trees in the yard, there are a lot of leaves and they get blown into piles just on the edge of the woods and lawn. The backlighting that hits just right is wonderful. Of course you have to be quick to get it before the sun does.

I started on the tripod, but switch to handheld for a lot of these first shots. It was easier to maneuver and the light was good enough that I didn’t have to use a high ISO. Plus I don’t hate the EVF on the G9. The shapes, textures, shadows and colors were so intriguing.

Mostly we have sugar and red maples around, but the basswood leaves are great, too.

In terms of processing, I kept the white balance and general color tonality as I found it, but cranked the details slider in Luminar Flex. Mostly the medium range and that brought up the mid-tone contrast as well. Remember to overexpose for the whiteness of the frost itself and you should get the exposure correct. 

Some of the strange little weeds and flowers stay green at first and I really liked the added color. Makes the impending winter a little less threatening.

We have a lot of hornbeam on the edges of the woods. The leaves stick around like American beech does, but a little more croggled.

Then the little things started to catch my attention and I went back for the tripod and the macro. I love moss and frosty moss is pretty awesome. I really wanted to move that leaf, but knew if I did I’d probably wreck the whole scene so it stayed.

Then there were the sporophytes. This solo shot turned out much better than the groups.

I just love how sporophytes seem to have a stop-action animation about them. As if I’ve just caught them playing freeze tag. 

Eventually my second cup of coffee was calling, so thanks for sharing my morning in the yard with some frost and gentle sun. It’s a habit that has been with me for a long time. I found tiny marvels in NH and I find them in WI. If you’re open to beauty and finding wonder in the most familiar, you can find it anywhere, anytime.