A gentle rain overnight left Piney Woods Church Road covered with tiny jewels — water droplets reflecting the roadside landscape, upside-down in miniature. I think I would be content to spend the rest of my life just photographing drops of water for the wonders they contain.
On a mild but overcast afternoon in late winter, I pause at a drainage ditch halfway down Piney Woods Church Road. In my camera, I capture the peculiar world of the water surface — dappled and silvery, a mysterious looking glass containing tree branches, ripples, and strands of grass, bound together by liquid and light.
As I walked Piney Woods Church Road this morning, in the wake of the ice storm (which continued through the night, turning to snow toward the end), I took quite a few photographs of ice festooning pines and other trees and shrubs. The ice was already melting, covering my camera and me with water droplets. The drops also fell into a pothole along the road, forming overlapping circles on the water’s surface. If I had been asked two months ago if I would ever photograph a pothole as art, I would have laughed. Of course, since then I have taken numerous photographs of Piney Woods Church Road ruts and drainage gullies…. There is beauty and wonder everywhere.
The tumultuous thunderstorm of early morning had passed, and the fog was lifting. I arrived at Piney Woods Church Road to discover, quite literally, a river running through it — flowing down the roadway and into the very same ruts that had been covered in ice just a few days before (see Day Seven). Now, the rut held a lovely pattern of ripple marks, sedimentary structures formed by the action of water flowing across the silt of the roadbed. I tried to take a photo of the ripple marks without any reflections present, mostly for my own appreciation as a geologist. But each time I attempted to do so, I ended up in the photograph, regardless of which side of the rut I stood, or how wet my feet became in the process. Ironically, the result was this delightful self-portrait.
As my project duration moves into the double digits (365 definitely feels like a long way off!), clouds have returned to the Georgia Piedmont. On a highly humid day (near one hundred percent), I ventured to Piney Woods Church Road in the early afternoon, in search of fog. There were light patches that helped soften the background landscape a bit, but nothing particularly enticing to photograph. Instead, though, I quickly discovered the potential of photographing water droplets suspended from the tips of leaves and branches. Using my plus four macro lens, I took dozens of droplet photos as I walked toward Hutcheson Ferry Road and back. My first — and last — photographs were taken of droplets on the leaves of cedar trees growing along the edge of a property bordering the road at its intersection with Rico Road. Facing the intersection, I framed my photos to include the brilliant red of the stop sign, out of focus in the background. Returning along Piney Woods Church Road, I wondered if it might be possible to take the same photograph, but include a vehicle driving by. The result (on the second attempt) was the image below. I have titled it “Stop Action” to reflect the juxtaposition of the car racing by with the “frozen in time” feeling created by the water droplet, with the stop sign adds further to this visual contradiction. I am tempted to add that this is probably one of my most didactic photos I have taken lately, recommending that we “stop action” from time to time in order to notice the ephemeral and the beautiful all around us. How often have we allowed ourselves the time after a light rainfall to wander the land, admiring the lingering water droplets that cover pine needles and honeysuckle vine tendrils like tiny jewels?
