Here’s my photo “Gifts of the Rain,” awarded Third Prize, Color Waterscapes, in the Exhibition of Photography at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar. But there’s more to it than this single image, beyond my pleasure at having won a prize.
You see the exhibit print with required mat, as printed by a fine local craftsman, John Watts of Watts Digital Photography. His attention to detail shows especially in the multiple meniscuses around the edges of the leaves.
Or, I should say, menisci in the plural, from a Greek word for crescent. A meniscus is the curve in the upper surface of a liquid close to the surface of the container or another object, produced by surface tension. Such curves, like the ones around the leaves in this image, or surrounding stones or twigs, fascinate me.
And this kind of detail is what made me take this photograph—and dozens of others like it—in the first place. I was on a quest.
Seldom can I pinpoint name one image as “the first” but in this case, I know exactly what gave birth to my prize picture.
Four years ago, I was walking the Buttonbush Trail in Eastham, MA, a short distance from the Visitors Center of the Cape Cod National Seashore. Oddly enough, during my teenage years, I’d lived barely half a mile away; back then, though, I didn’t know of the place at all, concealed by trees as it was. (I’m not sure many others did, either.) Thus, decades later, with the park’s research and development of land, this swamp, crammed with plants in murky water, burst upon me as entirely new territory.
I’d never caught reflections (and menisci) like these before, so ornamented with multiple lines. Though I quickly realized this particular image was flawed and too busy, as were a couple of others taken right afterward, immediately I wanted to see and photograph more like it.
But what exactly was I looking for? The effect turned out to be complex in itself, and often part of a complicated scene. I easily identified images which didn’t work, due to cluttery, muddled results. Over the next couple of years, I worked to figure out the elements of my desired personal mix: water, multiple reflections of both sky and plants in the water, also if I could manage it, perhaps the surface and even the bottom of the body of water underneath. Thinking further, I began to see that I was trying to create a kind of three-dimensional world on the page. And all this from those steel-engraving-like multiple lines of meniscus and precise reflections around such things as twigs or stones or leaves.
I learned, too, that couldn’t always include every element, but I looked for a balance among them, whether I stood ankle-deep in the shallows of a pond or splashed though a fraction of an inch of rain. The same sky, the same sun, or clouds, reigns over all.
However, where I live and photo most of the time, not much comes from the sky except sun. San Diego is a place of drought, with few lakes or ponds. (Beaches are another matter entirely, not least because such effects often vanish soon or right after they’ve happened, due to tides and waves.) I photograph sidewalks and puddles after what rain we do get, and often chance encounters with water such as fountains in public places or parks. Or heavy morning dew, for we live near the coast and I delight in spider webs or plants decorated in droplets.
Visiting Cape Cod at least once a year, I explore the ponds, especially Great Pond in Eastham and Owl Pond in Brewster. For many summers, I often walked and photographed the Red Lily Pond and Lake Elizabeth in Craigville. In recent years, I’ve also loved exploring the shores of Lake Mendota, in Madison, WI.
Why am I so fascinated with water? Again, I can cite a genesis: Minister’s Pond in Eastham, where my family moved when I was eleven. Our business was a summer cottage “colony” on three acres, with eight of our nine rental cottages sweetly ranged along one shore of the pond.
I lived that pond! I was marked by it. Or, you could say I knew it “prepositionally.” On top of it, I skated, or floating on it on my back, looked up at the sky. I also rowed all over, exploring. In: my fingers became raisin-y and puckered every day all summer; I dived, plunged in, or was thrown off the float. Dipping a hand from my rowboat, I netted (or simply grabbed) painted turtles which practically offered themselves near a swampy little island. My feet knew the pond’s sandy bottom; out further, after the “drop off,” my arms quickly learned to angle upward soon after cleaving the surface or get tangled in slimy weeds, and colder water.
I saw the pond in all seasons, walked its shoreline whose level of course varied with rainfall each year. The pond filled my eyes, my senses, even my mouth as every so often, I’d swallow some of its pleasantly irony water. After a long swim, my forearms would register a faint rusty cast from that iron. For those teenage years, Minister’s Pond and the paths in the woods around it, were my territory.
And there’s another clue to my interest in visual representation of water: the advertising brochure that my father put together for our cottage business. I remember him working carefully on its content, also consulting a local artist on design, which he shared with me.
On the back fold is a map of Cape Cod; here an arrow points to Nauset Haven and our location in Eastham. And look! The overall shape of the Cape is surrounded by parallel lines, a kind of invented meniscus; I think this was probably a stock map/image of waves lapping at the shore. So, long before I ever thought of taking these photographs, let alone using such lines for emphasis or artistic effect, that idea of multiply outlined shapes was planted in me.
Coming back now to my fair photograph. Hardly taken in or near a pond, it’s of a puddle in my church’s parking lot, where I’ve taken hundreds of photos. Around church, I’m known for staring down at the ground after rain, camera on hand. My friends are used to me, if a bit bemused.
The leaves here are from an ornamental flowering pear tree, a commonly used landscaping tree in this area. In or after rain, I always check its leaves, blossoms, shadows and reflections; I also monitor a similar area on the church patio featuring a cassia tree. Those same elements of my “mix”—my multi-dimensional vision— await me, and often I go back or stay on after a service or meeting to work alone. Or some mornings, as Andy and I arrive for choir warmup, I have to capture “just a few more images!”
Thinking about the Fair photograph, my thoughts themselves are like the outlines of meniscus, a pond’s worth of thoughts and ideas surrounding all the ways I photograph and relate to water.
Although I had hoped for higher than third place, I’m pleased to win at all. I guess we all harbor high hopes for our efforts. Still, perhaps my Third Place ribbon will draw a few more seconds of attention to what is essentially the image of a parking space.
And, underneath my own pleasure in the ribbon, there’s the important thing: all this beauty out there. I must pay attention, miss nothing. So much awaits my eyes, in ponds and parking lots, gutters and swamps, even drinking glasses, every day of my life.
