first snowdrops

How do you decide which elements of an landscape to keep in focus and therefore critical to both composition and meaning and which elements to leave in the background and out of focus?

In the image, on the right, I liked the smaller flower, its spiky green leaves and the branch reaching out of the picture more than I liked the larger white flower or the red spike. To me, the larger flower will be front-and-center no matter where I focus; and the red spike will pull the eye from the greens and browns around it. I chose to concentrate on the smaller secondary flower and to keep it in sharp focus. (Cropping the whole right-side of the image further showcases the flowers, the branch and the red spike.)

Snowdrops multiply and cluster each year they are in the ground. (My last group of snowdrops had reached clump status – blooming in large batches – in the side flower-bed. When the side-bed was removed, I didn’t bother transplanting the clumps, because I assumed all I had to do was replant. Wrong. I had forgotten all the years where only one or two flowers came out.) This is the second year for the snowdrops and already the bulbs are producing more than single white flowers.