About the Image(s)

I am from WV originally and know all about the beautiful colors the trees produce in the fall. I keep hearing that there are no colorful trees in the South and we don't have seasonal changes like up north.. There may not be a great number of colorful trees in the south but there are some gorgeous colors if you just look around. Last Wednesday I led a group of CNPA photographers to the George L Smith State Park in Twin City Ga. to a 412 acre pond of some unbelievable colored trees.This lake is home to a ton of Bald Cypress Trees. Their leaves don't last long when they start to change. I like to catch them with some green, yellow and orange just before they change completely to that burnt orange. The multi colors add some interest and definition to the foliage. It also adds some texture and contrast which I like. The oranges are good but they become one-dimensional. We were shooting in the evening to take advantage of the setting sun behind us. I was shooting with the Nikon D500 and a 70-200 Nikon lens. A lot of the trees are not really close so I chose the crop sensor camera over my full frame. Shot this at F2.8 and ISO of 400 and 175mm focal length. I was using the new- used 70-200 (like new) I had bought recently at a bargain at an estate sale. I'm really liking the performance of this lens.
I cropped so that the subject tree was easy to find and brightened up the image in LRC. I also ran the original image through Topaz AI to clean any noise and add some sharpening.