Every so often on my daily rambles, I encounter shapes in nature — usually leaves — that evoke some other image, such as an animal or human figure. This happened many months ago, when I photographed a dark image that I titled, at my wife Valerie’s recommendation, “Strange Leaf”. And today, as the seasons have swung back around into the months of shriveled, brown leaves, it has happened again. Today I offer two such images, which I am calling “Leaf Puppets”. The first is a pair of dried wisteria leaves evocative of human figures, both suspended by their stems along the road bank. The second is a nearby sweetgum leaf, conjuring in my mind an image of a swan in flight. If you do not imagine the same, that is OK, too. The folds of the leaves and the patterns of light and dark, focus and blur, are inviting by themselves.
