Thank you Mongo, Frank and Akira for your generous comments.
Mongo, interpretation is a word that may do me too much justice here. I simply set up the camera and tripod, got the framing I wanted and made sure there was nothing that deterred from a uniform background. I try to always be that careful with such shots but a lot of what I end up with is utter crap!
Frank, your point about complementary colors is interesting to me. In my design work, I have used complementary colors but had not applied that concept to light and shadows in the natural world. What also surprised me was that the colors in the picture are pretty much out of camera except for some tweaking of the exposure with some small increase in saturation. I didn't expect the purples (although the leaves in neutral light are a maroon shade and being translucent can change colors when light shines through them, which of course is true of many leaves).
Akira, this Japanese Maple is in my front yard and I find myself continually returning to it as a subject of my photography. It so often surprises me. Are they as popular in Japan as they are in Connecticut?
