Bright Colours Today

Late Autumn Maple (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Yongnuo 85mm f/1.8 DCM lens, ISO 100, 1/800 sec at f/1.8, handheld)

A quick trip down to Edinburgh today yielded a couple of colourful photo opportunities on the journey home.  This first shot is of a maple in full autumn colour in my brother/sister-in-law's garden.  Maples are defintiely one of the most colourful of our trees in autumn and this one was displaying the full range from green through to yellow, orange and red, nicely off-set against the blue sky behind.  I opted for the f/1.8 (largest) aperture to get a shallow depth of field and a good soft bokeh effect which worked well I think.

Later, when we were almost home, we stopped at Eilean Donan to capture it in its Remembrance Day red illumination.  This was taken on the tripod with a long exposure to get as much light as possible, given how dark it was.  It was a bit breezey so I didn't want too long an exposure but ended up balancing the exposure length with the ISO to try and achieve manageable noise levels in the dark areas.  I had to do a bit of post-processing noise reduction in the darker areas of the image but it worked OK.  This is a cropped version in square format.  The orignial included part of the bridge leading off to the right but I felt it was too contrasty with the red as it was lit in bright white light.

Eilean Donan Castle in Remembrance Day Red Illumination (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 24mm, ISO 800, 2.5 sec at f/4.0, tripod, cropped)