Location Taken: Somewhere in western Manitoba, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

This photo’s a prime example of why I decided to post photos that almost turned out. I love the composition of this photo, I love the colors, and I love the subject. I love them too much to just give up on the photo entirely. But the focus is off, there’s blur lines because I took this while sitting in a car going 70 mph (well, 110 km/h, this was Canada), the horizon’s not quite level, and you can see the reflection of my arm in the window between the camera and the trees. At least I tend to wear dark clothes, so it’s only my pasty pale skin that reflects. And I couldn’t exactly stop and retake the photo, since we were traveling for a reason other than photography opportunities.

If I remember right, this area was getting a lot of rain. We’d been driving through rain for days, so it wasn’t too surprising to come across flooded fields once we hit the flat farmlands of Manitoba. Some of the impromptu ponds were on the impressive side, though, like this one.

For whatever reason, I’ve always liked seeing flooded fields. It’s not exactly good for the field, much less the crop planted there, so I’m sure it’s a hassle to the farmer, but they’re oddly pretty. Some of it’s just the prettiness of any pond, but seeing the plants through the water is also pretty. And it also has the appeal of the temporary, that extra bit of specialness from knowing that very few people will see exactly what you’re seeing. Clouds have a similar effect, and the ones this day were also showing beautifully.

At least clouds are too far away to really get affected by motion blur or focal range issues (if the focus is on anything further away than 6 feet or so, the clouds will be at least somewhat clear).

I actually took a lot of cloud photos while sitting in the car watching the scenery go by. I couldn’t exactly stop the car every time I saw a fantastic cloud formation. This was the prairie, after all, we’d be stopping every 10 feet.

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