I almost kept walking. It’s a question I think every photographer asks themselves a dozen times a day: “Is this really interesting enough to stop for?“

In front of me was a closed-up ice cream shop. Its little seating area, just a simple set of chairs for customers to enjoy their frozen treats, was roped off since it was only nine in the morning. However, there was something about the colors, a bright green and somehow mature purple, that caught my eye and made me do a double-take. And then it hit me.

The colors. That unmistakable pairing of green and purple. My brain immediately went, “Cosmo and Wanda!” It was like stumbling upon my own set of Fairly OddParents right there in real time! Maybe the purple, almost pink, wasn’t a perfect match for Wanda 🙄, but that was definitely Cosmo in the green. Now I had to get the shot!

So, how do you do justice to a cartoon-colored set of chairs? My go-to is usually to get low and shoot from a squat. It creates a more dramatic angle that gives the subject a sense of towering authority. But, that just wasn’t working here. The angle looked a bit strange and, worse, it seemed to wash out the very colors that had caught my attention in the first place.

I snapped a quick, straight-on shot just for safety, a typical “just in case” photo. Then I tried shooting from an angle, but that felt wrong as well. It looked like I was favoring Cosmo over Wanda, and we can’t have that. That’s when I decided to try a bird’s-eye view from directly above.

And this is the moment I really missed my Canon (Canon EOS R). That articulating screen would have been a lifesaver. Trying to hold my camera perfectly flat over the chairs, completely blind to the framing, was a bit of a gamble. It took a few extra attempts of me just guessing and hoping for the best, but I finally got one that worked.

In the end, it was a fun little challenge and I got to revisit a small part of my childhood. A simple set of chairs became a whole creative problem to solve, all sparked by a random cartoon memory. It’s a good reminder that inspiration isn’t always some grand, beautiful landscape; sometimes, it’s just a splash of color that takes you back and makes you smile.