Saturated Autumn Colours

Oh so many to choose from this morning. A keen frost last night at -4 gave some beautiful frost edgings to the plants but in the end I chose this one for a completely different reason.....light.

Light is such an etherial thing that it is very hard to capture. Different lights change the tones of the subject. Some people try to compensate in photo editing and then saturate the colours which always looks false.

I took a different route to the beach this morning and passed this tree. I noticed it's bright hue but it didn't twig (like the pun?) until I had gone past that it was artificial. Right next to the tree is a low pressure sodium light which emits an orange light and accentuates shadows. The new high pressure sodium lights tend more towards the white end getting closer to the horrible cold light of Murcury vapour but in terms of road safety, much safer.

I walked back and took a number of pictures to show how the artificial light can naturally saturate the already orange/yellow leaves to good effect. You can see the spill light on the bark of the tree in the top right of the picture.