Category: Tolleston Dunes Trail

More Sticks & Dead Leaves…

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… more November goodness out at the Tolleston Dunes. Muted colors under a grey sky are so much fun to work with, and the sparse foliage provides more options for composition.

The Tolleston dune complex is older that the dunes closer to the lake and supports a rare Black Oak Savanna ecosystem. Black Oak Savanna once covered 5 million acres in the Great Lakes region. Today only about 30,000 acres remain and about 10% of that is found within the Indiana Dunes National Park.

By mid November much but not all of the ground cover has receeded. But this just means that there are more options for subject isolation and compositions that feature strong lines.

In another post I quipped about people seeming surprised that I would come out to the park to photograph dead leaves. Dead and dying leaves are so interesting though. The colors and textures are fascinating and beautiful.

Dead leaves and water always a good combination.

Mosses, Lichens and Fungi are year round subjects. The patterns and textures they present make for interesting closeups.

A lot of vertical subjects present themselves.

All The Colors Of Summer… And Then Some

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Natures color pallet can take a little bit of time to hit full stride. The early spring wild flowers are predominantly white and yellow. Apparently this is due to the fact that flys are among the earliest pollinators to emerge as winter transitions into spring. Flys do not see color and so they identify flowers by brightness and contrast against the predominantly green back ground. Blues and reds tend to show up a little bit later as the bees become active. It is now mid June and all of the colors of nature are present, including colors which do not appear in the rainbow! Light does not actually contain colors like magenta and purple. The reason we perceive these colors is due to the way in which the brain interprets the information it receives from the red, green and blue sensors in the eye.

All photos were taken on the Tolleston Dunes trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park

Roses and Deptford Pink bring, well… pink to the landscape.
Yellows are abundantly represented by Sulpher Cinquefoil, St. Johns Wort and Blackeyed Susans.
Greens are of course the dominant color. Though they may be over shadowed by more showy wildflowers, grasses have a fascinating beauty of their own.
Oranges are less common, but these Butterfly Weed blossoms more than hold their own in the landscape. More than any other color they really stand out against the greens.
Spider wort brings the blues to the party.
White is also not a color in the spectrum, being how our brain interprets the presence of red, green and blue light in roughly equal measure. But these Fleabane and Phlox flowers don’t care about technicalities such as whether or not white is a color.