No Fishing #10119

The Story

Along the quiet banks of a frozen lake, a No Fishing sign stands watch with no one around. It’s the quiet morning after an overnight snowfall. In fact, my tire tracks were the first ones through here that morning running through six inches of snow.

On a winter’s day even despite the sunshine, I wouldn’t need to be told twice about not fishing here! Ice fishing is only for a certain few hardy souls who simply love to fish. I’ll go out to photograph in zero weather, but the warm truck usually isn’t very far away!

Snaking along the ground and into the distance is a pipe on posts which looks pretty unusual. It runs parallel to the frozen lake’s shoreline. What’s missing are the small boats and kayaks that kept here in summer, chained to the pipe.

And that’s why the No Fishing sign, meant for summer use: it’s a boating area. It was that unusual sign with the long shadow angling away, the curving frozen shoreline, and the long snaking pipe running along the plain white snow that drew me to make this shot. I simply liked the way the composition fell as well as the little story a picture might tell when built around this obscure little sign in a park.

As always in photography, there’s no telling when and where the Photo Gypsy might say to you “Now here’s a shot!”

Location: Schellsburg, Bedford County, Pennsylvania.