Designed by nature

Alan Bosse was at a truck stop in Long Beach, Calif., in 2009 when he made a seemingly insignificant decision. With a few extra minutes to spare, the long-haul trucker and graphic design student took his new camera out and snapped a few photos of passion flowers growing along a nearby fence.A few months later Bosse, 50, entered the photo, “Passion and Bee” in a nationwide Earth Day photo contest sponsored by the website Bing. It won first-place out of approximately 17,000 entries.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I went online and saw my photo was ranked fourth, so I encouraged everyone I knew to vote for it. And then I won.”