Color Pool

I look at this photo and still can't believe it almost didn't happen. Not that this picture is anything special really, but I do kind of like it and the cornucopia of colors swirling in the puddle--augmented by the leaf stem sticking up on the right-hand side almost like a punctuation mark on the whole scene. But when I shot this I was walking to my office about 9am on a dreary December morning and noticed a puddle right next to where I took a photo of some mushrooms a few months ago. It was cold, rainy, and though I had my D7100 + 50mm lens with me I was not really in a picture-taking mood. I just wanted to get inside and warm up, but a little voice over my shoulder told me to pause, set down my backpack (because briefcases are way lame), and just take a photo already. So I knelt down on the soggy grass and got to work.

I knew right away I wanted to use the leaf stem as a compositional element, but was not sure exactly how to use the rest of the photo to frame it. I shot a few pics w