The textures and character of this green leaf leapt out at me. EOS 7D, EFS 50mm 1.4 at f/2.5 1/250, ISO 110, Lumopro flash at 1/32 power
I have often wondered what a blind person’s ideas about colour might be. How do you tell someone who has been blind from birth what green is. I had a friend who became blind as an adult due to a car accident. She told me that when she needed to remind herself what green was she would eat an avocado. When I made this picture I wanted the same kind of intense green feeling that biting into an avocado would give you. That, and the texture of the leaf needed to be explored. I took this picture in Victoria, BC on a kind of overcast, grey day and I could see that the texture was there but I didn’t feel like it would come through in a photograph without some special treatment. I put a flash on the ground below the leaf and used Cactus brand wireless trigger to fire it. I had to experiment with the power a little bit to get the exposure right but eventually the green just leapt off of my LCD screen and I could see the light of the flash pushing through the veins in the plant illuminating all of that glorious complexity.
-Russell Berg