Weekly Photo Challenge: Experimental

I’m not sure that this really fits the subject of this week’s challenge but I liked this photo and I could stretch the meaning to fit……

This is a shot that I took during a “sundowner” happy hour overlooking the Serengeti in Tanzania.  The sky was incredible but the only prominent point of interest was a single Acacia tree not far away.  Those trees are frequent subjects of African sunset photography so it wasn’t very innovative from that aspect.  What struck me about the scene was that the tree’s canopy was totally mirrored by the clouds just above – perfect semi-circles.  I decided to take a photo where the subject was dead center in the frame – something I rarely do.   I set my aperture to try and catch a sun star as the sun emerged below the clouds but above the tree.  I had my camera on a pocket tripod so I was lining the shot up as the sun and clouds moved – as luck would have it, at the perfect moment, I could see a perfectly round lens flare forming as the sun reflected off the center of my lens.  I snapped the shot at that second to catch this additional highlight to the symmetry of the scene – it is faint but hopefully apparent in the photo – forming a perfect circle around both the tree and the sun.  An experiment in composition with a little help from mother nature.