A WiFi Laxative? Or, Evolution of a Photograph

It all started when I needed to take our aging Sheltie on a walk to help him poop.  He's literally on his last legs as a collision with a pick up truck a few years ago caused some damage to rear legs and hips.  At twelve years old, things are slowing down, if you know what I mean.  While walking down our shady, wet driveway, I spotted lots of fallen leaves of the Cascara Buckthorn, AKA Cascara Sagrada, or, to botanists, Rhamnus purshiana.  I didn't want to bring the camera out in the rain, but when i spotted this bright yellow leaf and its bright red petiole, I knew I needed a photo.  I brought the leaf inside and looked for an appropriate background in my kitchen studio.

The first two photos were taken on the dining room table with ordinary white copy paper as a background.  You can see the bright red petiole (stem), but I was not satisfied.

I then tried our black, glass stove top, but there were too many reflections.  My photo session was interrupted by a sudden need to visit the bathroom.  Ordinarily I wouldn't mention such a detail in the blog.  However, the fact is, our dog, Bagel, was unsuccessful on our earlier walk.  I was quite aware that Cascara, or extracts of it, is widely used as a laxative, and has been since ancient times.  The first Europeans to visit California witnessed its use for this purpose among the Native Americans along the California and Oregon coasts. 
I didn't know that merely looking at the plant would suffice, but here I was in the bathroom wondering. 

A few minutes later, as I laughed at my silly idea about a visual stimulus performing the job of a laxative, I decided to Google the plant before resuming my photo session.  I found that when I visited sites written by botanists I mostly found out its relationship to other plants, namely its membership in the Buckthorn family, Rhamnaceae, and its similarity to Coffeeberry, Rhamnus rubra, and various ecological and anatomical information about it.  On the other hand, when I visited websites dealing with the plant's alleged medicinal properties, wow!   I found it had dozens of different names when pondered or used by various indigenous people and by New Age health practitioners.  Lots of interesting, and sometimes foolish folklore, and, of course, opportunities to spend lots of money on a remedy that's growing wild all over the place - free!  I resumed my photography by trying the oak dining room table as background.  Bad lighting (above).

Then I decided to try for black, so I placed the leaf on my son's mouse pad.  Bad lighting, and wrong camera setting, so I got a blurry image and a yellowish black background.  Another failure.

I corrected the camera setting and got a sharper image on the mouse pad, and was tempted to crop this one and call the mission a success.  But still not satisfied.  I started thinking like my photographer friend Spencer Dykstra and striving for a successful image, but was probably not prepared to be satisfied.

Finally, an image that satisfied me.  Not perfect by any means, but at least the colors yellow and red are similar to what I remembered seeing at the edge of my driveway in the shade while it was drizzling.  This one was taken in top of my laptop case.  If you click on it, you can see the texture of the canvas fabric, but I still found this image more satisfying than all the previous ones.  And it was lots of fun imagining that if I need a laxative in the future, maybe I can just stare at some Cascara Buckthorn leaves and get results.