Walk softly and carry a big lens

Having started my morning at 4am in my office I thought I deserved a noon walkabout. With no tripod and only my 150-600mm lens, I captured this image from several hundred yards away at 500mm. Currently there isn’t much color in our area of Missouri and forecasters are predicting peek color to be around November 9th. Good grief that’s late – if it happens at all.

I wasn’t able to get close up to this landscape due to a flooded field in front of it. I plan on going back in a few days and take my knee waders and possible shoot a pano image. The trees bursting with color are sweet gum with the background trees being green willow. My guess on the dead trees is cottonwood or willow.

In many of my images I look for contrasts. Not necessarily in light and color, although some of that is here, but in subjects. Among the color are two much taller, dead trees. That’s the contrast I was seeing.

This image reminded me of epistle of Jude. The writer compares “false teachers,” those telling a different version of the gospel, to dead trees in autumn. Verse 12 reads, “They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots.”

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