It Takes a Blue Toyota To Photograph an Orange Tree: How to Capture an Autumn Maple With Curves from Japan

Every year, the tree near our garage explodes in color. And every year, I'm frustrated that I can't quite capture how amazing it is. But this year, I tried using my Blue Toyota Sienna as a reflector, and I used a borrowed Nikon D3x 24 megapixel full frame digital SLR to capture the beauty.

Finally, the car gave that tree the companion it needed to really show off.

Oh, wait. This isn't the Nikon. It's just the iPhone camera. And the old one at that... a measly 2 Mpixels.

I love how the curves of the hood give action to the tree. Every time I just aim a camera at the amazing tree, it seems to hide its beauty. But I like how these work.

Okay, kinda the same, but I just couldn't choose.

I wonder what causes that ripple effect.

A view on the side window. My neighbor's white picket fence peeks through.

Glorious orange.

Oh, I just think this is so cool. Look at the round window bolt cover. Even it has reflection of the tree.

I Photoshopped in the picket fence cause I thought it looked so cool. Not true. This is just how it came out of the camera. (With a smidge of exposure correction.)

Ah, the secrets of Toyota photography go on. It turns out you can make and ugly tree look great too. This wasn't a setup. Was just how the little iPhone camera saw things.

I love the little red leaf stuck in the rear wiper. Also look at how the distortion in the glass near the base of the wiper makes things look fluid.

And now it all looks very pedestrian and not so exciting, like it always seems to do each year. The blue Toyota is in the driveway on the right. The orange tree is in the foregrounc (you knew that.) And the "ugly tree" that was in the rear window is just behind the minivan. Ah, the orange tree has finally been captured. Maybe this spring I'll use the same technique on the Cherry tree, which also has defied great photography.

2 responses
Ah, I love it. A friend of mine asked me who lent me the Nikon D3x 24 Mpixel camera for this photo shoot. I was only kidding, which I guess I said too subtly. All the photos were taken with my iPhone 3G camera. It's actually amazing what you can do with 2Mpixels!
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