Two Drops on a Purple Leaf

India · nature

Two clean hemispheres of rainwater sit on the long purple leaf of a Tradescantia, the leaf's edge faintly outlined in the same deep pink as the flower it never reveals here.

Tradescantia pallida — purple secretia, purple-heart, wandering jew, depending on whose garden you are in — is one of those plants that earns its keep on colour alone. The leaves run a deep aubergine that holds up in any light, edged with a thinner stripe of pink that catches sun like piping. The flowers, when they bother, are small pink three-petalled things; most of the year the leaves do the talking.

I found this one after an afternoon shower with two drops still holding their shape on a single leaf. The drops were small enough not to roll off, big enough to act as tiny convex lenses, each one carrying a faint inverted reflection of the garden inside it. I shot in close, the long axis of the leaf running diagonally across the frame, the depth of field thin enough that only the drops themselves were truly sharp. There is a category of macro that requires patience and a category that requires being in the right corner of the garden at the right ten-minute window. This was the second kind.

View on site · Full gallery · Instagram