One of the advantages to walking to work is that I get to take advantage of the frosty mornings when others are still in bed (you know who I mean!) or are sat shivering in their car.

I have taken quite a few frosty leaf pictures in the last couple of years, but I never tire of them.  This leaf was sat all on its own on the footpath – it is probably not there now, begging for its photo to be taken.  The sycamore/maple family of trees certainly provide their fair share of pretty leaves.

What I liked about this is the way that the frost had muted what are otherwise quite bright leaves, the frost on the tarmac and the contrast between nature and man-made surfaces.

I took the shot with my compact set on macro mode and the settings chosen for the early morning light were 1/30secs at ISO80, f/3.2 and 6mm.

Instead of taking a picture of the lupin flowers (although I sort of did that as well- picture on Flickr ) I decided to take a picture of the leaf.

The in-your-face nature of the flowers means that the leaves are often overlooked – I have never taken a photo of them before (although I haven’t taken one of the flowers either so that just means that I don’t have any in my garden), but they are so architectural.  Just look at the shape, they seem very precise and neat, and get slowly darker from the centre to the edge.

As I was in Ryton then my macro lens came as standard, settings were ISO200, 1/125 secs, f/10.

This time the picture is of part of a Hellebore leaf that had caught the morning sun.  I like this picture because of the texture, the jagged edge of the leaf and the different shades of green – there is something almost reptilian about the leaf.  It also shows how intricate so much of nature is – I am sure there is a reason for the patterns of veins on the leaf.

I had the camera set to shutter priority (to stop me accidentally wandering into the realms of camera shake), at 1/125secs, ISO200 and, because it was quite low light the aperture ended up at 5.0.  (Needless to say I was handholding the 400D with my 100mm macro lens.)

Anyway, unlike most of my attempts at dew drops this has come out pretty sharp (although I have sharpened it a touch in Lightroom).  What I liked about this however, was not the dew drops, pretty though they are, but the shadows they cast on the other leaves.  The drops at the top and bottom of the picture are linked by an s-curve, and the picture retains a degree of simplicity by the fact that there is only one type of leaf and only one colour against a black background.

I decided to make the picture a little more abstract by cropping out quite a lot of the picture.

This picture was taken handheld using my EOS 400D equipped with macro lens, ISO200, 1/125secs, f/13.

I have taken lots of pictures in the snow, but some of my more successful ones have been of simple objects such as this fallen leaf that was almost hidden, and, judging by the tyre tracks was mainly unnoticed.

The other problem with taking pictures of snow is the blue cast that the pictures take on due to the ultra violet reflections.  It is therefore worth sorting out the white balance whilst processing.

The thing I liked about this picture was the simplicity combined with the different textures caused by the tyre and footprints as well as the clean snow.

The photo was taken using a 70-300mm zoom lens (because I had been taking some other pictures), at ISO400, f/6.3, 1/125secs.