Through the Surface

Longtime Weekly Fifty readers know that one of my favorite locations for taking photos is Theta Pond at the OSU campus. There’s always something new and interesting going on around various parts of campus, but nothing quite like just sitting by the pond to collect your thoughts or taking a stroll among the geese, squirrels, and turtles that inhabit the area. Even on the most un-photogenic days in the dead of Winter with nary a speck of color to be found, there’s always something worth photographing. You just have to look a bit harder for it.

While dead leaves laying flat on the ground aren’t always the most photogenic subjects (though they certainly can be, with a little bit of creativity) I thought this maple leaf floating just barely beneath the surface of Theta Pond looked particularly compelling. It feels delicate, almost precarious, as if a single breath or slight breeze would disrupt the entire scene. The leaf looks as though it’s trapped under ice which wasn’t actually the case since the temps were in the mid 60’s, but it’s a cool effect nonetheless. I think it’s the stillness of this composition that I like the most–a sense of calm and serenity that mirrors the general sense of being on campus at the end of the school year, as if the physical environment feels the same sense of exhaustion that many of the students do as they prepare for final exams.

To get this picture I held my D750 + 105mm macro lens pointed straight downwards and moved my viewpoint until the leaf filled the frame with just a bit of empty space around it. I liked the multiple layers at work: dead cypress needles on top of the water, the brown maple leaf just underneath, and a green magnolia leaf a bit farther down. I normally think of images in terms of foreground/subject/background, but this shot is three-dimensional in a different way with the layers being clearly distinct and discernible yet still lending that same sense of first/middle/last to the composition. I did remove some bits of dirt, dust, and other assorted flotsam and jetsam with the healing tool in Lightroom but nothing super egregious in my opinion. I also had to correct, just a bit, for the green coloration of the water which, as anyone who has visited this location will know, is an ever-present reminder of the artificial nature of the pond and the human intervention required to maintain it. All in all though, I really like how this captures a feeling that is difficult to put into words but is often shared by many people at OSU when they wander around the pond.