Above: Dahlia blossom, Glendale Gardens, Victoria, BC

Below: Flamingo, Victoria Butterfly Gardens, BC

Canon 30d, 60 f/2.8 macro, ISO: 100, aperture: f/2.8

Whether repetitive or random, natural or man made, patterns in the landscape make me look ‘harder’ at a photograph.  I think that’s a good thing.  I wonder, what am I looking at?  Sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes not so much.  The mystery of the not so obvious makes me search for answers.  First, I look close at the details in the individual patterns in selected parts of the image, and then I push back and focus on the entire image.  Somewhere along the line I make a decision, do I like it or is it just ‘interesting’.  Either way, looking ‘harder’ at an image forces me to look closer at composition, camera settings, lighting, sharpness, contrast, tonal values, saturation…. If a photograph makes me do that, well, I like it.

Images were converted to black & white and edited with Lightroom 4 beta.  Edits were made in the basic panel and the contrast was adjusted with the tone curve.