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Sapling Reflected in Pond

The photo on the right is one of my earliest photographs.  I took it at the State and County Arboretum in Arcadia, CA.  I had taken pictures of the sapling many times before but the pictures always came out in a washed out, grayish color.  It was the ethereal quality of the picture and its composition that fascinated me.  I was a bit perplexed and tried to figure out a way to show the scene in a visually attractive way.

On day it dawned on me that perhaps a little artificial color would provide the  'punch' the photograph needed.  Since I had a set of filters for use in black & white photography with me, I tried taking pictures of the scene using different B & W filters, mainly a red, green, and yellow filter.  The red filter provided me with the picture I wanted; an abstract view of the sapling reflected in the pond with the sun behind it.

This photograph is memorable because it got me thinking about my photographs.  Specifically I would ask myself why I am taking the picture.   From that I would compose the picture to emphasize the reason for taking the picture and excluding everything else.  I have seldom resorted to using filters like I did with this one, but lesson learned from doing so here has been the guiding principle in my photography.