Into the Unknown

Into the Unknown

Wednesday evening about an hour before sunset I went out to the lake. I am working on a personal project where I am documenting, fine art fashion, Lake Lowell. I am a big believer in photographing your local area. Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel and photograph other locations as well, however I feel that we can create more intimate and meaningful images of areas that we frequent often. Lake Lowell has become my personal, local photographic project.

When I first started this project, it was a challenge. Many of the local don’t regard Lake Lowell as a very attractive place, so I needed to get beyond that and show my vision of what we have in our own backyard. I now get very different reactions when the locals view these images. In fact, just last night, my son looked at an image that I shot Wednesday and asked, “Is that in Oregon?” He was surprised when I told him I had just shot the image out at the lake the night before.

This image, “Into the Unknown,” is an image just created the other night while out at the lake. I had shot this staircase before, but was not happy with what I had done. An advantage to being local is that I can go back until I get what I want. The light was much better this time and the brush was also better. Just enough green in the midst of the drying weeds to create interest. Offsetting the stairs a bit helped as well. Good use of the rule of thirds. Last time I shot it symmetrically, and I didn’t like it at all. It was too predictable and boring. This is much more interesting.