Of Cool Clear Water

WindowsOnWater_7097, originally uploaded by carolsLittleWorld.

They say that something like 75% of the earth’s surface is covered in water. If you have ever been out sailing, or perhaps taken a trans-oceanic flight, you might be more aware of this than others. There’s really a lot of water on our little blue ball of a planet.

Water comes in all forms, shapes, and sizes too. The glaciers of Alaska? Yup, mostly water. The icebergs up in Iceland? Water too. The canals of Venice? Water still. Water, water everywhere indeed.

Water does interesting things for photographers. It distorts things. It bends things. It makes things look unreal. Sometimes, it just sits there and looks pretty too. It’s an interesting thing, water is, and it provides many an opportunity for the photographer who is willing to look at it in just the right way.

Yesterday, we had bad storms come through. They were quite heave with a lot of rain, damaging winds, and lightning that was quite dramatic. It’s also supposed to rain all week, even though Saturday.

Now, normally, I would not like the rain-it does funky things to your camera and makes it harder to get out and shoot, but there’s something about water, right now, right at this time, in this place, that I really like. We need the rain and it would otherwise be too hot, even this early in the season. It was 98 the other day, without any of the pesky water falling from the sky.

There are so many ways a photographer can use water-more ways than I can even count. There are reflections, waterfalls, water in motion, shooting underwater, and lots more. Heck, this week has shown me too that, another valid way of shooting with water is staying home and shooting in your studio when it’s raining out. Stay home, in your studio or shoot indoors, on account of the rain. Think of all of the studio work we do when it’s otherwise raining and, yes, all of that work is brought to you, in part, thanks to water.

Water, the humble, clear, odorless and tasteless liquid nobody likes to think about but in actuality exists everywhere our eyes can see.

Living in the southwest, we have a special relationship with water. Many of our cities and towns are, in fact, running out of water. Sounds hard to believe, but it’s true. There is water everywhere yet, in some parts, not enough. (Last year’s wildfires reminded us of this the hard way.)

So, the next time you go out shooting, I’d encourage you to look at water. Really look at it. Look at it in a different light. Look at it and tell me, what exactly is it that you see? Because, what you see today, why, it just might not be there tomorrow. In the land of water, things just sort of work that way sometimes.

Until next time…