Broken glass and falling stars

 After a warm month of May I decided to go out and about taking pictures of what I could find outdoors. But despite the beauty of the natural world around me what I ended up being drawn to were the puddles upon the ground around me.

They reflected the sun and clouds beautifully and tinged with oil and blown by the wind the reflections they produced unraveled and became abstract shapes and patterns upon the ground.

Broken glass and fallen stars exploded in their depths or morphed to become some strange moon filled sky. I was enraptured by the abstract beauties they produced.

And so even though I set out to capture the beauty of May I caught in puddles broken glass and falling stars.

A metal and plastic sky

A year or so ago I discovered the joy of finding reflections in unorthodox surfaces; puddles, rivers, concrete and windows. All these I poured over looking at new angles from which to take photos at.

One day I was at a bus stop with my camera and when I looked up I was inspired for above me was a second sky, one of metal and plastic. I always meant to return to explore more of the strange sky but I never did, until now.

Its been raining over Cardiff today, so I was taking shelter under a bus stop with my camera when I looked up. Immediately I knew what my latest blog post would be about. I explored a number of stops in my area as the light over head changed from a grey grizzled sky, to a deep bruised colour before finally setting into night.

It was a new world, a colourful and bright on that shimmered and shivered with all the colours and reflections of a metal and plastic sky.

The swamp waters

Down by where I work are some swampy waters to which I sometimes go, filled as they are with rushes, reeds, trees and tangled beds of roots. Fish swim in their murky depth and sometimes I can imagine that stranger, larger creatures prowl just below the surface of the waters.

Sometimes I am joined by a single solitary heron who patiently stalks the water looking for any fish who are foolish enough to pass by beneath it.

Water drips down from a grey sky creating ripples in the waters below, the reflections on the waters surface momentarily disrupted.

Its somewhere I go when I want to think, to watch a world quietly going by without a man or woman to disturb it.

And in these strange swampy waters briefly I find peace.

The world at the bottom of every pool

“Why, if we can get back to our own world by jumping into this pool, mightn’t we get somewhere else by jumping into one of the others? Supposing there was a world at the bottom of every pool.”

C.S Lewis - The Magician's Nephew

 

I've sometimes had a secret fantasy that one day when passing by a particularly clear watery reflection that I would jump in and instead of emerging soaked I would continue to fall directly into another world, one of fantasy and magic.

Of course its just a fantasy but when I set out recently to take photos its something I bore in mind as I scoured the streets looking for puddles that reflected the world around me.

Its been raining non stop for the last week and the UK is groaning under the weight of all the water that has poured down upon the streets.

Out of all this bad weather however came the most amazing opportunities for photography as black and gold patches of water stretched across its lanes.

And though it was challenging, through patient effort I was able to create a number of images that reflected this fantasy. A series of photos which hinted that the depth of these reflections held something more. At a world at the bottom of every pool.

The sky in the lakeside

I decided to focus on my abstract reflection work again this week, as the last few posts I had done had mostly focused on travel or realistic subject matters. I had noticed on my way into work that I passed a particularly beautiful lake with some lovely reflections.

Setting out with my camera I decided to focus on creating a series of dreamy images of the sky. I've felt in the past that looking up into the sky gives the impression of gazing into some great ocean through which a vessel could glide across a great blue silent sea.

This was what I wanted to create by that lakeside, the dream that instead of standing looking at a lake you might be gazing at another world, one where the horizon and the water's edge blur and becomes instead a never ending sky of water and wind.

The drowned woodland

 My work with reflections led me this week to explore the idea of nature and woodland being merged with water and rivers. I've always loved places where two things meet, whether its where the sea meets the land, urban street clashes with plants and trees or in this case the place where wood meets water.

Reflections contain that possibility, to merge and project, to create surreal images that twist and distort. To marry these desperate elements. In this case it involved finding a patch of land that met an body of water still and shallow enough to blend these disparate elements.

By following the streams and rivers near my local parks I was able to find such places. To create images where these two worlds met, clashed and finally merged into each other. In these places I was able to create the illusion of the drowned woodland.

Ripples in the water

A few years ago this blog would most likely have been covered in photos of watery reflections. I've moved on a bit since then but every now and then I like to revisit that particular obsession of mine.

I found myself chilling out in a park in Cardiff recently and after finding a particularly lovely river I decided to take some pictures of the reflections on it

What I like about going back to old subjects and seeing how my style has evolved and changed. Where once I would have obsessed over creating a perfectly clear reflection I now found myself drawn to how the ripples on water distorted and added to the reflections found on the river.

By doing this I felt like I was able to take an older more familiar subject like reflection work and put new wrinkles on it. Like ripples on the water time has changed the way I work with this subject and that can only be a good thing.

The world in a mirror

I love car windscreens and hoods (i'm strange like that). They produce beautiful effects and with them you can create everything from an expressionist painting to a window into some far away galaxy.

I love them covered in fresh raindrops when they glitter and shine or reflecting street lamps on a frosty night when they become a constellation of stars. They become multicolored filters that twist and turn the world in a multitude of different ways. Or they can create impressionist dreams of colour, shape and form.

Beauty is where you find it and occasionally for me thats reflected in the bumper of a parked car.

Reflections on water

"And what you love-but turn away-you lose.
You see a phantom of a mirrored shape;
Nothing itself; with you it came and stays;
With you too it will go...if you can go?" - Ovid Metamorphoses

I've always been drawn to water; its beauty, its mercurial nature and most of all its ability to reflect and perhaps question the fragile nature of our reality. It was therefore always going to be a subject that I would spend endless hours photographing.

Its elusive as well, sometimes what you see as the perfect reflection disappoints you or slips into the mundane when caught on camera. Your shots of the splashes and sprays that were so dramatic at the time, become tame or (worst of all) boring when pouring over them on your computer. Its a tricky siren, but one that calls you back again and again, just hoping to catch the enchantment and magic that drew you to it in the first place.

The world it serves up are for me tantalising mirrors of what could be. A world free from reality, gravity, sanity and perspective. And then you turn and walk away from it and you realise that with you gazing upon its reflections it came and with you walking away from it it will too go, if you can go?