Sitting On The Water

As I continue to go through the archives, I found a couple of photographs I shot while visiting my brother one day.  He has a small pond in his front yard and you can generally find all kinds of wildlife and foliage in there.  Back in 2012 I published another photo that I took from his pond.  That one of a little frog who snuck into my photograph.  There were no frogs to be seen on this day, but the water lilies were in full bloom.  I really liked their light colours against the dark background of the water, so I spent a few minutes snapping some photographs and these were my two favourites.  I also learned a quick lesson in easy problem solving.  I almost left without having taken any photographs at all because many of the green lily pads were kind of dry looking and were covered in bird droppings.  My brother saw that I was beginning to pack up my gear and asked why I wasn't taking more photos.  I quickly described my problem and no sooner did I finish speaking, my brother disappeared into the house and came out with a broom.  A few quick swishes in the water with the handle and all of my problems were gone.  Thanks Little Brother.  I've got to work on bettering my problem solving skills.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 70mm.  For the second photograph, I shot at f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 68mm.  I also tried taking the second shot with the flowers in reverse order, we could also move the flowers around with the broomstick, but there is so much more colour and detail in the red flower that I felt it was kind of a shame to leave it out of focus.  I also kind of liked reversing my usual habit of having the foreground in focus while the background would be blurred.