Nothing but net . . .

It was overcast but not raining this morning, which is perfect weather for me to photograph a place I call the "fishnet ranch." Big piles of colorful fishing nets are scattered about in a huge parking lot. For me, it's incredibly exciting, sort of like how I used to feel as a kid going to Disneyland.

Last month I was looking at some of my previous photos taken at this location and was thinking that they were all starting to look the same. Does this happen to you? You visit a place over and over and uh-oh, you're not doing anything new? This time, I really TRIED to come up with different stuff.

Something that caught my eye was how dark black the freshly surfaced parking lot looked — wet and clean from previous rains. I knew that by metering off the lighter-colored nets, the black would go even blacker, thus setting off the bright colors. Black + overcast light = jewel-like colors.

So, for me, this is something different. Instead of concentrating solely on patterns in the nets, I included the asphalt. It grounds the piles of nets and helps emphasize color.

Remember the old movie with Alan Alda — "The Four Seasons?" One of the characters was a photographer. And all she photographed was fruit. Finally she had a breakthrough, announcing she was no longer photographing fruit. She was going to photograph vegetables. Methinks this "radical shift" for me might be akin to forsaking fruit for vegetables . . . ©Carol Leigh