Radial Botanics

Detail on the ornate gate at the East Gate of the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.

It’s the time of year when in this part of the world foliage turns from luscious green to vivid yellow, red and golden brown. On a calm day with a strong low sun there is great pleasure in strolling along a path through a woodland or garden carpeted with leaves. The colours of autumn are, for me at least, an annual gift to photographers and artists.

This year autumn has been very late or perhaps split, with a premature start to the season in August due to an unseasonal cold snap, followed by an unseasonally warmer spell, a late summery warmth that saw flowers bloom for a second time in a year and out of season or at least very late. The former cold spell started the process to shed the leaves from a few trees which when combined with strong winds, laid them bare. Most others survived and have lasted into a late autumn in November. As I write this I wish I’d taken some better shots to illustrate this. I’m not sure I have adequately done that.

In the right conditions it is too easy to produce 100s of autumn photographs as everywhere you turn there is another photographic opportunity. In the end it can be difficult to find things that are unusual and not just more of the same.

This series of images was taken on 12 November 2011 during a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. The angle of the sun was so low the light was either extremely contrasty or in the most case, residual and subdued, requiring slower shutter speeds, higher ISO and wide apertures.

I have isolated a selection with a theme of “Radial Botanics” as these images show radial patterns of objects or have a focal point radiating from a centre, albeit sometimes a virtual one outside the image.

As well as appreciating the wonderful colours of autumn, I trust these capture some different colours, but more especially the patterns and shapes in nature.

Golden yellow trees, curved and “leaning in” provide a radial frame that focuses
on the greenhouses and glass dome.

Ducks swimming around.

Golden brown oak leaves lying around.

Late flower in bloom. Anyone know what it is?

Fallen leaves making a pattern on the grass.

The bark of a Red Birch tree.
The slightly curved linear features against the rich red colour indicates
the radial nature of tree trunks.

Fuchsias in bloom.

The beautiful silvery white bark of a Betula Utilis (Silver Birch) tree.

I started so I’ll finish with an inorganic subject, although this time there is no reference to nature apart from the wooden beams. Unusual architectural features on the side of the main entrance building to the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. Even the linear objects have circular patterns and as a whole give a radial focus to the circular objects beneath them.

These photographs were taken in November 2011 using a Fujifilm S5 DSLR. Shot in RAW format and processed in Photoshop CS2 ACR2.4