Mist Over Still Pond
This photo was taken a few years ago, at a place only about fifteen miles from my home. It has been one of my more popular photos, appearing on tote bags, notepads, and prints, and garnering many comments. But yesterday, I drove to the site, and saw that it's gone. Obviously, the place itself is still there, but the scene is unrecognizable. The trees have been damaged by wind and time, fallen over, broken, and anyone who saw it today would not be able to tell it was the spot where this photograph was made.
That is nature's way. Always changing. Time, weather, gravity, wind, water: all these forces are perpetually at work, sculpting and shaping everything. Our human perspective, short-lived and sentimental, often wants things to remain the same. We tend to cling to the idea of something we like, and our minds and emotions rebel against change. But change is constant, and nature carries on. From the downed trees and limbs, new life appears. The cycle continues.
One of the things I really like about doing photography is the idea of capturing an instant in time, freezing it, so that it can be seen, reviewed, and enjoyed repeatedly. When I snap the shutter, a tiny slice of nature, at a specific instant of time, is recorded and stored. That particular instant will never be repeated: a wave hitting the shore, the boughs of a tree waving in the wind, the position of a bird's wings in flight, the mist rising in billows from the surface of a pond; all things are moving, aging, rising, falling, growing, decaying, never to be repeated in quite the same way. A photo can capture a thin slice that represents the way things were at that exact instant, but will never be again. It's only a faint echo of the reality; it isn't three-dimensional, it doesn't carry the sounds and smells and full reality of that place and time. But the image can evoke the sense of the moment, and bring it back in a dreamlike way. That is what I find magical about doing nature photography. It's like casting a spell to collect the essence of a moment in time, and hold onto it, so it can be seen by others who weren't present, but who can thereby catch an idea of what that was like.
I hope you enjoy this image. Because the place isn't there anymore.
I got up an hour before dawn, on a day in early spring, to drive to this spot, which I had previously scouted. I was sure that the pond would have mist over it in the early morning, and I wanted to try to capture what that looked like, felt like. It seemed to call for a 50mm prime lens, and in the very dim pre-dawn light, required a longish shutter speed, so I set up a tripod, and set the exposure to capture the mood of the early morning. Standing on the southern bank of the pond, I moved around a bit until I had the two trees to the sides framing the trees across the pond, with their reflection in the still water, and the absolutely gorgeous mist wafting between. At that early hour, birds were singing happily to greet the new day, and the soft, dim light was just beginning to show muted colors in trees and grasses. At 6:30am, I was entirely alone out there, and felt as if nature were unveiling a great gift, just for me. Although it was several years ago, it is a morning that is clear in my memory, and this photo helps me to go back to there and then, and relive it. I love getting out in nature, and this is why I love nature photography.