a focal point

sometimes it’s tricky, when i take 80 or 100 photos of the same arrangement, to decide which one to keep. a lot of times it’s almost arbitrary. but sometimes the winner announces itself because it has a focal point. there is beauty and interest and a nice composition and good color and all that, but there is something else that draws your eye. some spot inside the image that asks you to pay attention to it, and sort of organizes everything else around it. in this case, it was the little dark hollow in the upper third of the image. there are a few fern fronds that point into it, and it is darker than the rest, and it makes you wonder what else is going on down there, and it makes the lighter green ferns around it look sunlit. it’s the thing i look at first, before i move on to all the rest.

understory

turtle lake, shoreview, minnesota