Ryerson flowers and garbage

Ryerson flowers and garbage - wrecked landscape #21 and daily photo #353/365, originally uploaded by PJMixer.

I created a small project called Wrecked Landscapes a while ago and when I saw this today at Ryerson University I thought it would be a good addition. So, the groundskeepers go to all this trouble to make the campus look nice with flowers and shrubs, so which department decided to put the big garbage can right next to the flowers ? And like so many garbage cans downtown, are overflowing garbage cans a sign of our wasteful ways or an understaffed or lazy maintenance department ?

I took a few shots, flip-flopping on whether to have the garbage in focus or not and a student walks into the frame and is talking on his cell phone and looking at the same scene. He there's long enough for me to frame the shot and before he leaves he uses his phone to take a picture of the same scene ! Was he thinking the same as me or just curious what I was so interested in ? He then turned and entered the building so I didn't get a chance to talk with him.

I recently read on Digital Photography School about multi-layered photography and thought this was a great example. There is the foreground image, it's connection to the garbage and then you have the student's story.