Bougainvillea on the Lane to Papaya Resort, Tekek, Tioman Island

This is the short walk from the Tekek jetty down to Papaya Resort on Tioman, a little before six on a gloomy September evening. The cloud had the sky locked down to a flat grey, no shadows anywhere, the kind of light that makes the sea look tired. About halfway along, the lane passes a hedge that has stopped being a hedge and turned into a wall of bougainvillea, and under that sky the pink was the brightest thing around.

I had the 16-50 at 16mm and stood almost inside the bush, so the flowers fill the left of the frame and the lane runs away on the right. The overhead wires ended up doing a lot of the work. They pull your eye down the road to the blue roofs, the parked motorbikes, the yellow plastic chairs outside a shop, and the hills behind, still green under the cloud. f/5.6, 1/750, ISO 640, at 5:49 in the evening.

On a day like that I stop chasing light and look for colour instead. It is the same weather I had at Bang Bao Pier on Koh Chang, another island jetty under grey skies, and the same get-in-close approach as the morning petunias in Rangamati. If tropical flowers are your thing, my write-up on Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden has plenty more.