I have photographed this pond many many times. It is only a few feet from, a busy road (busy in the summer, that is) connecting the beaches of Wells and Kennebunk, but it always has the atmosphere of a secluded pool somewhere deep in the wilderness. Give it a good sky for reflections, and the right light, and it never fails to please. The Wild Iris is just a bonus, of the kind that is likely to turn up in the foreground at this pond. The low angle and the wide lens here puts everything into perspective and completes the composition. Even the overhanging tree on the upper left makes its contribution. 

I have attempted this kind of shot so many times in the past, with a strong foreground element against a landscape with interesting sky, without, I must say, much success. The ZEISS Touit 12mm f2.8 lens is the first lens I have used (I don’t own it…yet 🙂 that makes the shot not only possible, but easy. You can not (propably) imagine how close I was to that flower. I had to drop the camera in from the top, with the flip-up lcd out, down among the lily fonds to frame the single flower. And to credit the Sony Alpha NEX camera (5T in this case), it was able to find focus and set exposure (using Superior Auto) for an image that I could process in Snapseed using the HDR Scene filter to a fairly accurate rendering of the visual scene. To some eyes it might look a bit pumped up…but this is Maine in early summer…the way life is supposed to be…and I can attest that it is actually pretty realistic. It is just that we are not used to seeing this range of light and shadow, of color and contrast, in an image unless we are looking at a painting…at an obviously artistic interpretation. (The extreme depth of field is also unexpected in a photograph and adds to the painterly look.) In my HDR work, I strive for realism, not for obvious effect, and this image is, at the very least, life the way it is supposed to be. 🙂

Sony NEX 5T with ZEISS Touit 12mm f2.8. ISO 100 @ 1/100th @ f11. Processed for HDR effect in Snapseed on my tablet.