Time to Revisit the Japanese maple Tree

I always glance at the beautiful Japanese maple tree by the side of the driveway every time I walk down to fetch the newspaper, which, of course is Newsday.  The tree always looks a bit different depending on the light and the weather.  For some reason it stopped me in my tracks this morning and I returned to the house to get my camera.  When we moved in to this house in 1970 it was a young tree and I sometimes still think of it as a "small tree."  But it is not!  Look at the size of the main limbs that join in the center!  This tree is just amazing and so beautiful.  I do worry that it is getting old, just like me, and that one of these large branches could break off and dramatically change how the tree looks.

You have seen photographs taken of this tree before using my camera that has been modified to only capture infrared light, and this is yet another photograph.  After doing the first photograph in color, I went back into the house and got the infrared camera, just to see once again how it transforms everything.  The most dramatic change is that any living plant with chlorophyl in the foliage reflects huge amounts of infrared light, and so those plants glow as white in terms of brightness.  It makes some scenes magical.