Colors of Fall Starting to Fade

Here in the Northeast the Fall colors are beginning to fade. I met my friend at the Celery Farm Natural Area in Allendale NJ one morning to see what we could find before the Fall colors turned into brown, dried out leaves. I thought we had a good chance to find bright subjects that would stand out against the fading or subdued foliage. I decided to travel light, taking my Canon 70-300mm DO lens on a EOS 1D MkIV body which gave me a good focal length range in a small, lightweight package. I also used a Canon Flash set at -1 stop just to help fill in my subjects in the early morning light and helped me shoot handheld instead of using a tripod. The Canon 70-300mm DO has a poor reputation because of its Diffraction Optics, but it is one of my favorite lenses. It is about an inch shorter , but wider than a normal 70-300mm lens. It also has Image Stabilization, but I believe it takes a second for it to kick in, so I take this into account also. Shooting Raw files and adjusting them in Adobe Camera Raw makes this lens shine and a winner. Getting back to photographing, I tried different crops, shooting angles, and combining bright or vibrant subjects with darker subjects or backgrounds. I was also trying to place my subjects on a pleasing softer backdrop, so I used an f/ stop of f/7.1 or f/8 to keep the backgrounds simpler. Hope you enjoy them.