As I was walking into work a few days ago, I happened to look down and catch this little scene where the trees had dropped some of their magenta blooms, and the blooms were lying atop some green ground cover. In the very, very early morning light, I was struck by the contrast of colors, and I thought about stopping to photograph it. But, my hands were full, and the light was so faint that any image would have been very noisy. I decided not to worry about it and went on my way.
Sitting at my desk as the minutes ticked away, I couldn’t stop thinking about the color contrast. I decided that, once the light got a little bit brighter, I would go back outside and grab a quick shot with my phone since that was all I had. Waiting for felt like forever, the sky brightened up, and I made my way outside.
Getting back to the location, I found the blooms were not evenly spread. Some areas had more blooms, and others had less blooms. I had to find the right balance between the blooms and the ground cover. Too much of one and not enough of the other and the contrast that had caught my attention would have been lost as one or the other colors would have been dominant. That wasn’t what I was looking for.
I spent a few minutes walking around trying to find the right combination, and I’m sure the couple of other folks that were walking into the building at the time must have thought I was borderline crazy. Perhaps I was, but I was just as amazed at how no one seemed to even notice the scene even though I was, in essence, pointing it to them.
Finally, I found a small area that I thought had the balance I needed. With my phone in hand, I positioned the camera so the phone and the subject were parallel to each other to maximize depth of field. After all, it would not have worked to have anything that wasn’t sharp. Once I was satisfied with how it looked on my phone screen, I pressed the button and captured this photograph.