As I was walking through River Park at dawn a few days ago, I glanced to my left and noticed the sunrise framed by the trees alongside the riverbank.

I recalled taking an interior decorating course by correspondence many, many years ago when I was home on maternity leave with our daughter. One of the course lessons suggested to look to nature for perfect colour combinations in home decor. I’m not certain I’d use greens, yellows, and oranges together in any of the rooms in my home, but they sure were stunning together on nature’s palette that morning.

I was also reminded of our province’s rival national football team’s colours of green and gold, and the flag of Ireland, which is green and orange with white in the middle.

These thoughts, of course, took me down the rabbit hole of Google research where I learned about the significance of the colours on the Irish flag, and that our rival football team is sporting new uniforms this year (still staying with the green and gold). Once again, just stopping to take one photo paid off with some new knowledge. The research pre-blog is as much fun and as interesting as the post processing of my feature photo.

Photo Note: I took this photo into Snapseed and tried a few different filters, which I wasn’t fond of. I finally settled on just a soft contrast with the curves tool.


“The sky’s gone blue: azure, the ocean bluer: cerulean, the trees are swirls of every hella freaking green on earth and bright thick eggy yellow is spilling over everything.”

Jandy Nelson, I’ll Give You the Sun