I wanted my own version of the often-photographed Mt. Tom with wild iris, so I pre-scouted and kept this image in the back of my mind. Finally, one day at about 4:15 P.M., it had just stopped raining, and I knew the colors would look good. Green colors and soft light really snap using Fuji Velvia, but rain was the most important ingredient. I went to my pre-selected location and found the distant Mt. Tom sunlit with the irises in the foreground jumping into the scene. I like my images tack (razor) sharp which requires long shutter speeds of up to a second or more. There was a problem with depth of field due to wind, so I selected a much shorter shutter speed—around 1⁄15 of a second. This meant that the entire image would not be in focus. I decided to compose the photograph with Mt. Tom and the foreground irises in focus, sacrificing the middle area.
