One of the great joys of spending my first 31 years in Chicago was the amount of time I was able to spend at the Art Institute of Chicago which has one of the finest collections in the world of art in general and French Impressionist painting in particular. So I grew up with Monet's lily ponds in and on my mind and have amassed an extensive collection of water lily images of my own. The "gold," "blue" and "black" lily pond prints were photographed on the same day in the same pond in front of the conservatory in Balboa Park in San Diego. I usually use a polarizing filter to cut glare and saturate color. After taking a series with the polarizer, I decided to take off the polarizer to allow the reflection of the blue sky to wash over the entire image to get this effect.