Autumn Windfalls

I took this photo a few days back. It's a very autumnal scene with windfall pears and fuchsia flowers.

I've just put it through Photoshop's RAW editor and cropped it.

Given that is was an overcast day and it's taken under a pear tree and dense fuchsia bush, the colours are very vibrant. I've really only corrected the white balance (to the "daylight" rather than "overcast" setting), gently massaged the exposure and contrast and taken out a little yellow.

I used my borrowed Nikon D7000 with a Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm lens (fixed) @ f/1.4, 1/1320s, ISO 100.

Original image

Corrected and cropped

This lens can be set to a very large aperture so I think this is how the image was acceptably bright even at a shutter speed of 1/320s and a low ISO. This meant that the DOF was very tight and I think I've missed some foreground detail that I'd have liked to have captured. Going by the 1/3-2/3 principle for DOF, I could have dollied out and caught more of the foreground.

The general focus isn't perfect either but with manual focus and these settings, it felt quite unforgiving. I could have fired off a few more shots and hoped for more.

Compositionally I quite like it. The bright focal point ends up being a little off the third mark in the leaves to the right. The line of yellow pears takes the eye around to where you find the in-focus fuchsia flowers.

More experimentation required...