I found a beautiful golden maple leaf on my Juliet balcony just after noon on November 6, 2018. It was almost entirely gold, save for red accents on the top right and bottom left. Loath to let such an aesthetic leaf go to waste, I brought it inside and decided to capture it at its most resplendent. I put my petrified wood coaster on top of a melamine tray and misted the leaf with water. After setting the scene, I took a series of photos with my Nikon D40 and with my BlackBerry Classic.
The Golden Maple Leaf
Below, you will find the best picture of the bunch, taken with my Nikon D40:
Staging the Photo
I was working against the clock to capture this leaf image. The golden maple leaf was ephemeral, shriveling up almost as soon as it dried. Fortunately, everything fell into place for a nice picture. The leaf fit perfectly on my petrified wood coaster, which I had obtained at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden some years before. The melamine surface of my bed tray proved to be the perfect backdrop for the golden leaf on the coaster. I already had a mister with water for my plants, so I wasted no time setting the leaf up for its moment.
It is a bit of a shame that I let shadows sneak into the best picture of the leaf, but let us pretend that I did this intentionally to make some kind of esoteric artistic statement.
The Melamine Bed Tray’s Second Appearance
While this was the first time I thought of using the melamine surface of my bed tray for a picture, it was not the first time that we have seen the backdrop in The New Leaf Journal. Just over one month later, I used the same tray in a picture of a tampered-with container of yogurt, which I wrote about last May.