“Competition 76 WATER DROPS”

There’s a particular type of magic that hangs over the planet immediately after a torrent. This scene was shot from a low angle to showcase the unnoticed, micro worlds right around the very foundations of our existence.
While the gorgeous, blood red veins of the leaves are arresting enough when it’s dry, it’s the tiny water droplets, beading off the leaf’s waxy surface, that make for real eye-candy.

Each little droplet becomes a minute, magnifying glass-its water acting like lenses, refracting light while displaying the now clearing sky above the tiny canopy.

Water, it is plain to see, isn’t merely a sustainer of life, it also provides ornamentation for it too.

I went out searching for lush canopies looking at what we might expect - the leaves of a towering tree, perhaps - however, for this scene, instead, I decided to come down to grass roots level, and see things from the viewpoint of soil.

Up from the bottom, here we have neon red veined broad leaves that make for quite a lush jungal-area… they are covered, in tiny little clear-all-over perfectly formed sphere of recent-rained down water and due to the water repellent properties of the leaves, they gather in shiny little spheres instead of flattening out, they stay round like so much dropped glass or liquid diamonds.
They rest in grooves of the leaf or perch up on an edge waiting to roll off and continue their journey into the soil.