By Stephen Voss
Stephen Voss is an accomplished professional photographer and member of the National Bonsai Foundation’s board of directors. His photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
The fall bonsai is a tree in transition. In October and November, we see some trees that have held onto their vibrant green leaves and others that have dropped their foliage practically overnight. In between these two stages are the trees that I went looking for on a recent visit to the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum.
That’s why I love this time of burnt oranges and dusky reds, of late afternoon sunsets, of growing shadows and that rich, autumnal scent of decomposing leaves. When I leave the museum after a morning of photographing, I know when I return the scenes will be different, irretrievably changed. It doesn’t take a photographer’s eye to appreciate the daily, even hourly transitions as a cold fall rain moves in, or a hard freeze strips a tree of its foliage.
In the scenes here, I became interested in isolating fall color to make it stand out more. I looked for brightly colored leaves that I could compose against the dark trunk of a tree or the cool white of the museum walls. A line of red leaves became a river of color. An opening in one tree became a blurry frame through which to capture another tree in sharp detail. For these sorts of photographs, a macro lens (or even a telephoto lens) is helpful in composing, and I made most of these images in the 90mm-135mm range. It’s an old photographer’s trick, but sometimes squinting your eyes a bit can attune you more to the lights and darks in a scene; this helps you create an image that acknowledges color as part of a photo’s compositional form.
On my last walk through the gardens on the late October morning when I made these photos, I was composing a close-up image of a fallen leaf in one of the large ceramic water buckets. Just moments after I pushed the shutter button, the waterlogged leaf sunk under the surface and slowly drifted to the bottom of the bucket. I left that day with my photo of that fleeting moment, and a reminder of the wonders of this beautiful place that gives us continual gifts of surprise and amazement, if only we give it the time.
Stephen
Scenes from the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, October 2022. All photos by Stephen Voss for the National Bonsai Foundation.