First Fall Colors of the Season + Lens Flare Hunting

I think I mentioned before that we have had some really nice late summer, early fall weather. And it continues. Temperatures have been in their mid 20s °C, dry and sunny blue skies with scattered white clouds.

Time to get outside

Well, when there is time for that i.e. usually not during the week because of work and because days are most definitely getting a lot shorter. It is getting dark around 18:30 already, that's sunset and sunrise isn't until 7 am.

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But on Friday, I was very drained from a stressful week of early and long days, and I cheated. At about 14:00 I decided to take a real lunch break. Something I don't always do, just because there is always too much to do. However, I firmly believe that breaks are necessary just like taking vacations are. Both will be recharging you physically and mentally.

And that's what I needed on Friday. I would not have been able to continue to work and execute the work in a way that I'd be proud of. For me, it is important that I do my work well. In order to be able to do that on Friday I took a break and I went outside taking a brisk walk around the neighborhood. As always, my phone was with me and I took photos. As you will see some leaves are already turning color.

In the below section of photos I tried to follow a theme and take photos of leaves that had fallen onto the asphalt but were still very beautiful and picturesque. Don't you think?

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Then yesterday, Saturday, I had a bit of me time scheduled and got a nice hour-long massage late morning, then grabbed some groceries on the way home where we had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. But it was sooo nice outside that after a little digestion time we decided to hop on our bicycles and ride around town for about an hour. That was a great decision because it was another

Blooming wonderful day!

So, of course, I had to stop here and there when ever I saw some beautiful light filtering through the trees or on to leaves. Here are some pictures from our bike ride and also Friday's walk to give you an impression. How about some fallen leaves on grass or still on a tree and competing for light reaching into the blue skies?

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Of course, I couldn't resist playing around with portrait mode on my camera again, after all these are portraits of leaves, right? Obviously, portrait mode doesn't work for leaves on the ground like the ones above on the asphalt. But that doesn't mean it won't work for ANY leaves on the ground, you just can't take the picture top-down. You will have to get down low yourself and angle the camera so that you have space behind your subject, the leaf and ideally a secondary object in the distance to get blurred. Naturally it also works on leaves still on the tree.

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And last but certainly not least an all time love of mine

Lens flares and sun rays

I am sure you have come across these in your photography. Sometimes they seem to appear out of the blue but you can certainly force them to appear. When I see a low sun in the sky and the sunlight filtering through tall trees, I automatically go into hunting mode and try to get the best sun flares and rays in my photos.

Yesterday, I got quite lucky because we started our bike ride late so the sun was low. Our usual path always leads through some woods in the park, so here we are - look at these flares:

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Yes, lens flares may destroy a photo, absolutely, but in other photos they add a lot of interest. Here's a little comparison of almost exactly the same crop and point of view:

And here is the best, most interesting one to me. It has the same path and crop, hubby is riding the bike and there are very nice sun flares that are adding interest to the whole picture which otherwise would be only trees with a blue spec.

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How about you? Do you love lens flares and sun rays or do you hate them?

I'll wrap up the post with one of my favorite photos I took this weekend #SOOC (straight out of the camera - which as we all know really only happens if you shoot RAW format not e.g. jpg).

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_{Fall colored leaves hanging over a stream}

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Till next time!

Have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,
(Ocean)Bee

_{Unless otherwise noted, copyright for all photos, dividers, and gifs ©Oceanbee|ImagesByCW}

_{99.9% of photos taken with my Fuji X-T5 and iPhone}