White against pink
White: a small snail.
Pink: mountain pink, Centaurium beyrichii.
Date: June 25.
Place: Capital of Texas Highway.
If you’re interested in photography as a craft, you’ll find that points 1, 2, and especially 5 and 20 in About My Techniques are relevant to today’s picture.
© 2016 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Pretty. I like how the curve of the snail is in contrast to the straight line of the grass, and all set against pink.
melissabluefineart
September 11, 2016 at 8:00 AM
Like you, I favor that contrast between curved and straight, along with the featureless background pink. Part of me wishes the snail could have been cleaner, but we both know from long experience how dirty nature often is.
Steve Schwartzman
September 11, 2016 at 8:06 AM
The perfect combination .. 😄
Julie@frogpondfarm
September 11, 2016 at 8:33 AM
As far as I recall, it was a combination I’d never photographed before. Mountain pinks had served as a featureless background behind other subjects, though:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/yellow-and-pink/
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/rock-flax/
Steve Schwartzman
September 11, 2016 at 8:48 AM
Another happy feature is the bundle of branches. If there had been only the one that the snail is traveling on, I don’t think the photo would have been nearly as effective. The additional branches (or stems, or whatever) add weight, and help to balance the three elements of the photo: snail, pink, and branches.
shoreacres
September 11, 2016 at 9:05 AM
That’s a happy phrase, “happy feature.” As I recall, the “whatever” that the snail climbed on was dry grass stalks, perhaps little bluestem. In looking at them now, I see that they don’t weave together the way I had the impression that they did. I also hadn’t considered the heft offered by three stalks; thanks for mentioning that.
Steve Schwartzman
September 11, 2016 at 9:31 AM
Land snails are supposed to be my specialty, but I’m afraid I’m not at all familiar with the western fauna. Might you know the genus? And, it is a land snail … and not an emergent aquatic form?
Pairodox Farm
September 11, 2016 at 2:45 PM
It’s definitely a land snail, but I have no idea what the genus might be. Little land snails are quite common here.
Steve Schwartzman
September 11, 2016 at 5:22 PM
That is so striking against that heavy pink–in fact it’s such a saturated pink that it’s practically a purple.
krikitarts
September 11, 2016 at 3:03 PM
I see what you mean about verging on purple. I hadn’t thought about that. Hooray for mountain pinks!
Steve Schwartzman
September 11, 2016 at 5:23 PM
White against pink – the perfect combination!
Inger
September 12, 2016 at 12:36 PM
Where you are, white is more likely to be snow and pink part of a sunset.
Steve Schwartzman
September 12, 2016 at 3:20 PM
This snail really appears to be “in the pink”.
Gallivanta
September 13, 2016 at 5:18 AM
That’s mighty white of you (as I’ve heard people say in movies from the 1930s and ’40s).
http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/thats_white_of_you/
Steve Schwartzman
September 13, 2016 at 7:43 AM
Now that is something new to me. I obviously haven’t watched enough old movies.
Gallivanta
September 13, 2016 at 7:54 AM
I heard it recently in an old movie, but I can’t remember which one.
Steve Schwartzman
September 13, 2016 at 8:23 AM
The trouble with catching up on your posts is I run out of superlatives quickly. The pink background is perfect and I like the contrast between the curve of the snail and the straight stalks. Perfect. 🙂
Jane
September 17, 2016 at 1:39 AM
There’s another blurb for a book jacket or art gallery show announcement: “I run out of superlatives quickly.” Thanks as always.
Steve Schwartzman
September 17, 2016 at 10:14 AM
Striped Rabdotus? Love that pink background, though I would have oriented it ‘looking up.’ Must be the optimist in me. 😀
Shannon
September 19, 2016 at 11:35 AM
Ah, but if I’d aimed upward I couldn’t have gotten the mountain pinks as a halo behind the snail. Or if you mean that I should’ve rotated the picture 90°, then the mountain pink wouldn’t have been true to life (although admittedly as an abstraction most people wouldn’t have noticed.
Thanks for your suggestion of striped Rabdotus. I looked up some pictures of that but couldn’t tell if what I photographed is similar enough to any of those pictures to count as a match. Whatever the difficulties of photographing some subjects, I much prefer them to the difficulties of identifying species.
Steve Schwartzman
September 19, 2016 at 11:48 AM