Thanks for the intriguing comments, everyone!

"The Enigma of Plumbing" is my image, so I can provide a little background
on the grounding problem.  As Jim suspected, the ground is indeed an attempt
to create a 'neutral' element.  I prefer complex scenes with both tension
and harmony.  I exploit geometry, lighting, textures, whatever is necessary
to accomplish this balance.  "Plumbing" is one of the most mechanically
complex scenes I've ever created, so balancing this with neutral areas was
essential to me.

The scene started out with a far-away ground-level perspective, which
allowed a plain sky to serve as background.  But this arrangement didn't
emphasize certain elements sufficiently and felt too cliched to me.  So I
switched to the more omniscient viewpoint of the final scene.  This brought
the 'ground problem' into play.

However, lost in this viewpoint transition was a secondary theme of the
image: that all plumbing networks ultimately come from (and return to) the
ground.  To hint at this, I chose an "earthy" ground texture.  Yes, the two
source images for the ground were found on the internet.  I didn't bother to
attribute them because they are essentially unrecognizable: I modified them,
made them seamless, blended them together, and added turbulence.

Nevertheless, I was never fully satisfied with the result.  The 'graph
paper' ground idea is very interesting to me.  It gives me other ideas along
these lines that I may have to experiment with...

--
Glenn

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