Something Startles Me

Duckweed covers the surface of a still pool, photographed from directly overhead. A dense scatter of small pale-green leaves sits thickest across the upper frame, thinning toward a clearing below. Through the clearing a single brown oak leaf shows, lying just beneath the surface, its lobed edges legible but blurred — the one defined form amid the scatter. The plane of focus is shallow: the floating leaves resolve sharply in the upper third and break apart toward the edges. The palette refuses a single key, olive and yellow-green laid over warm brown and broken by one patch of cool gray. A heavy vignette presses the corners toward black. Shot in available light. Printed on fine art paper with archival pigment inks. No compositing. The leaf had gone to rot below; the green came over it without alarm.