Danielle Blog

Fall leaf – part 5

This is the last one in this particular fall leaf series. I think you can all see why this leaf jumped out at me when I saw it on the sidewalk.

Here is what I like about each image, that I think all of you have noticed too.

In the first one, you can see the yellow cells outlined by the green borders. They are so close to the green vein and reddish-orange region that provide nice contrast (but in retrospect, might be a hint more distracting than I’d planned on). If I were to re-post that one, I think I’d crop out the green vein.

In the second one, the veins are the star of the show. I’d intended for the color variation to be the focus, but the crevases of the veins and the patterns really draw your eye.

In the third one, the symmetry, and the tye-dye appearance really appeal to me. I also really like how the green reminds me of rays of sun coming up over the horizon or some sort of star burst.

In the fourth one, the green horns are just unbelievable. It also reminds me of a Rorschach blot in the way the patterns on each side are similar but not perfectly symmetrical. My eye is always drawn to the center vein and the red outline of cells around it. I just can’t quit tracing it with my eyes.

It reminds me of these art things my sister and I used to make. We’d start with our name or letters in black, and then would carefuly outline around it with one color of marker, and then another color. We’d keep tracing until an entire 8 1/2 x 11 paper was filled with lines of tracing. It might take all day to carefully trace with markers and not bleed into the nearby color…. but the end result was just beautiful. I wonder if we have any of those stored away at my parent’s home? I know Mom saved most of our artwork from school. If I ever get a chance to find it, I’ll show you what I mean.

This last one, isn’t quite like seeing the leaf on the sidewalk… but well, you can get a sense of what it looked like from farther away and what caught my eye.

Fall leaf – part 4

Fall leaf – part 3

Fall leaf – part 2

Fall leaf – part 1

I found a beautiful fall leaf on the sidewalk on my way into school the other morning. I think it was Wednesday. I’m not sure what type of leaf, someone who saw it said Maple. Perhaps. I don’t really know. All I know, is that this type of tree is my favorite.

Every fall, I see these trees that are part green, part orange and part red, with hints of yellow and colors in between, and I am awe struck by them.

For this particular leaf, I admired it for the remainder of my walk to the train station, tucked it away safely in my bag, and scanned it when I got into school.

I thought about putting it under a dissecting microscope and taking a digital image of it that way. But well, it takes a while to get the scope and lighting set up for materials that need to be lit from above, and I simply didn’t have the time.

I scanned it at 800 dpi and I am going to post pics of it each day from the closest view to the one that is zoomed out.

This first one is full resolution, just one small portion of it.

I like how you can see the colors changing from region to region. And you can see the veins and the cells. Especially at the bottom of this image where the green and yellow ones are located.

Biology is so beautiful.