If I tell people I’m a photographer, the question they usually ask  “What do you take photos of?”

What an excellent question.

When I think about it, my best answer would be that my current project is taking photos of puddles. Or, more specifically, taking photos of the world beyond the puddle.

Of course, when I say that, people usually look at me blankly for a moment.  But then they ask if they can see an example, since they are trying to figure out why the heck anyone in their right mind would take a photo of a puddle.

But really, I’m endlessly fascinated by how sometimes understanding a reflection in a puddle can be more than the sum of its parts, even when viewing photos of the same puddle.

For example, here’s a photo of a puddle I took yesterday on Neckar Island, down the path from where Friedrich Silcher’s statue sits.

A view beyond the mud puddle, Neckar Island, Tübingen, 2013

Even though the ground is really wet and muddy, the puddle seems to act as a window to reveal a world beyond the puddle where the trees are green and the sky is bright.

But then consider the following photo of the same puddle, taken from a different angle. You’ll need to also keep in mind that the trees on the Neckar Island at the moment are all bright green, as seen in yesterday’s photo of the trees around F. Silcher’s statue, and as seen also in the leaves in the photo above.

But as seen in the following photo, everything in that puddle appears to be mud-colored brown. At first glance, it’s not obvious why that would be, when in reality all the leaves are green:

Tree in the water, Neckar Island, Tübingen, 2013

If you click to enlarge the photo, and look first in just the area that seems to be just the reflection of the trunk of the tree, you’ll see that in fact the brown in the trunk is really the mud of the puddle under the water, and not actually the a reflection of the bark of the tree. You can see the rocks and other debris at the bottom of the puddle there in the “trunk” in the reflection.

The same thing also applies to the area that seem to be all those brown leaves, I think. We’re seeing just the outline (silhouette) of the tree reflected on top of the water, but that reflection effectively acts to cut the glare on the top of the water, so we can see “through” the reflection to the things at the bottom of the puddle.

Cool, eh?

So, yes, I take photos of puddles. For reasons that should now be obvious. 😉