Urban landscape maple leaf

Urban landscape maple leaf - #331/365, originally uploaded by PJMixer.

Believe it or not, It took about 30 shots to get this to something I liked (call me obsessive). I spotted a similar leaf as I was walking my dog in the neighbourhood and I thought the mixed wet/dry of the road added a little interest to the shot. There was a distracting unnatural mark on the original leaf so I found a suitable replacement and worked on a few different compositions. I wanted to keep the right side of the frame a little out of focus to give some depth, but as I was taking the shot at an angle I had some difficulty keeping the whole leaf in focus at the same time. I thought the wet/dry line in the road produced a little bit of a geographic contour or map feature, but then again it was late ! Big thanks to my dog Kooper who was a very patient companion while I was on my knees at the side of the road for a good 10 mins. The pop-up flash worked fine and shooting an angle to the ground made sure the flash didn't blow out or flatten the shot.