Canon EOS 60D ,Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
1/250s f/11.0 at 24.0mm iso200

One principle of photography that comes to mind when describing this photo is “Keep it Simple.” The bougainvillea overhanging a blue wall and photographed against a blue sky makes for an image that essentially only has two colors in it. Another way to put it is that most of the image is made of shades of a single color–blue–with the exception of the red bougainvillea, which therefore immediately stands out and draws the viewer’s attention. That’s the simplicity of the image.

Yet, it’s not so simple that it becomes boring. I love the playful shadows that seem to tease and dare me to figure out which shadow belongs to which branch. Finally, I like the overall composition, with a nice diagonal extending all the way from the shadow in the lower left corner to the branch in the upper right corner.

There is not much to say about the technical making of this image, expect perhaps for the exposure. Somehow, it was much too dark out of the camera, and I dialed in almost +1 exposure steps in the raw conversion. Perhaps the camera exposure meter was fooled by the colors? I also vaguely remembered that I wanted the sky to be dark, so perhaps I underexposed too much in camera? I don’t quite recall. The bottom line is two-fold: 1) pay attention to the histogram after taking the image (I apparently didn’t), and 2) photograph in raw because it’s much easier to correct wrong exposures without sacrificing quality (I always shoot raw).