One photo a day challenge: Day 192.

The opportunity to create this photograph arose out of completely unintentional circumstances.

I wanted to plant some bulbs over winter to bloom this year. Planting them in pots to keep them inside so they would hopefully grow faster.

I don’t like to waste resources. I had several pots of dirt from plants I have planted in the past. Many of these pots still had the remaining root balls of “dead” plants.

I used all this old dirt and other plant matter to pot the bulbs in for this season. The bulbs grew.

In addition to thge bulbs growing another plant began to emerge. It began to look like a plant that we had grown previously. It seemed like a plant from previous years unintentionally potted with the new bulbs was also growing.

The unexpected growth had the familiar look of a Dahlia plant. Eventually the plant began to get a flower head developing. Soon I would be able to see what had unexpectedly grown here.

Surprisingly but also not so surprisingly a brilliant Dahlia flower bloomed.

The circumstances that lead to the photo was unintentional. The creation of the image was intentional.

I selected my 60mm macro lens. Set it to shoot at the widest aperture. I set up three different lights to illuminate the flower in the dark. I adjusted the angles of light as I was shooting.

It was raining. The plants were on the porch mostly out of the rain. But there was enough mist and splatter of raindrops from the storm that the plants ended up with tiny water droplets on them.

Focus on the water droplets. Get close. Exclude everything else. Contrast against the dark.

Envision. See. Create.