Deep Fade #14931

The Story

Looking across a lake surrounded by woods and mountains, the shore stones in shallow water fade away into deeper and even blacker water. They’re like stepping stones disappearing down into another dark world. The black mirror surface reflects everything down the middle way out there, a repeating fifty-fifty view of the horizon. This lake is very beautiful year-round and quite often a scenic joy to behold. However, a photograph made in infrared black and white always makes another world out of any landscape. That’s clearly fun for me.

Infrared images have quite a different effect yet a true beauty of their own. Here, the water and sky go dark, gradually dropping to very black with the water depth, and the living foliage turns white with a hint of glow. Years ago, I began photography by shooting landscapes and find the changeup creating with infrared very refreshing and interesting. It certainly makes my curiosity rise wanting to see things in a different way. Then not so surprisingly, I often shoot the same scenes in color and infrared just for kicks even though it means carrying two cameras.

In a slightly negative emotional reading of this image, this is clearly a different kind of black hole. Out in the middle is where the dark secrets lie, never to see the light of day. There could also be primal fear of the deep felt when viewing this image. Perhaps there is too much mystery and unknown here to be comfortable. Yes, this black and white infrared picture can have the foreboding monsters under the bed kind of quality.

On the other hand, a positive take on the picture is the beauty of nature expressed an entirely different way. That beauty lies in the wonderful easy curves of the low mountains, the randomness of the scattered stones and their edges, the sheer black smooth-as-ice still lake surface. Stretching it a little, one could think of going places and moving forward viewing this image. Say, going across the lake over to that horizon. It could actually be inviting.

As always, art is subjective and open to interpretation. As for myself, I’ll choose the positive viewpoint concerning this image. Let’s go across.

Location: near Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania.