About the Image(s)

The song lyric "Green Door, what's that secret you're keepin'?" has remained in my head for 50+ years. It inferred secret and possibly erotic connotations. Serendipitously, I was photographing spring wildflowers near the pond at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware when kids from a visiting family noticed toads in the water. I used a Nikon Z7 and Nikkor Z 70-200mm f/2.8S lens to photograph them but didn't notice until I got home that each toad was actually two, a mating pair. I returned the next day with a 100-400mm lens but the toads had finished their party and retreated into the camouflage of woodland.

I had a collection of different pairs of toads at different angles and wondered how to show them. From the pond I had the feeling of a crowded party so I packed several images together. Then I photographed a closet door and changed its color to green via Hue/saturation. The closet packed with mating toads was good but it needed a foreground subject. I added a bullfrog 'doorman' from another shoot and the lettering on the door. The rest of this 9 layer composite was tonality and clean-up work. I tried to solve that half-century old question, "What's behind the Green Door?"