My daughter and I went on a scavenger hunt for leaves. We brought home a bagful of colors and made this. I'd been trying to find a photo-worthy landscape in the St. Louis area, one with the full spectrum of fall colors plus interesting foreground/background features -- but no luck. Either the leaves turn at different times or I find the landscape bland. So I made my own landscape, so to speak. It's simple, and I love it.
Recipe for this photo: Leaves on a table (obviously), three speedlites bounced off the wall to camera-right, and a small white reflector to camera-left. Key to getting even lighting across the leaves is positioning the table "far enough" away from the wall. Because the intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the light source and the subject (inverse square law), I put about eight feet between the wall and the table, thus creating roughly a 1/2-1 stop exposure difference across the leaves -- easily remedied in your favorite photo editor.
