A Good Crop.

I don’t know that I am on track for 12 good photos this year (not yet anyway, there’s still time.), but I do have a favorite from this month. This image was not planned; most of my images are not planned. I tend to go for a hike and just look for the things that interest me. This particular outing was near Houston, Texas, in Brazos Bend State Park. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived; it looked interesting on the map, so off I went. I have to admit that it was not at all what I was expecting. I thought I might get a lake and some trees at best, but I was surprised to discover an actual wetland in the middle of Texas. Alligators and Lilly were there, with some substantial American lotus flowers blooming everywhere I looked. I was a little overwhelmed by it all.

Once I had gotten over my surprise, I grabbed my camera bag and began a long, slow, hot walk around one of the lakes in the park. I followed my usual photography approach, keeping my eyes open and stopping when something caught my attention.  The trail followed the bank of the lake, and every 100 yards or so was a viewing platform that would jut out over the water ever so slightly. I stopped at everyone to photograph the aforementioned alligators and lotus flowers. About halfway around the lake, I found this little scene. It was the reflection of a tree in the water, and I could not resist a good reflection. But what grabbed me about this one was the plants just below the water's surface and all the algae floating on the surface. The relationship between the plant life in the water and the tree's reflection intrigued me; it was as though the plants in the water were the leaves on the reflected tree. 

I spent a fair amount of time moving my camera around incrementally to get the framing right. It wasn’t an issue of getting everything in the frame so much as keeping some aspects out of the frame. There were branches from nearby trees poking into the image, reeds in the foreground I found distracting, and I wanted to keep the river bank out of the image. Once I was happy with everything in the image (and everything that wasn’t), I created what I consider to be one of my 12 good images for the year. Now to get out there and collect the rest of them.