Blurred Highlights, Reeds

My companions and I camped beside this Rocky Mountain river one summer night. I woke before the others and decided to go for a hike before breakfast, upstream towards a large lake I knew was there. I was traveling light: only one small lens and a lightweight camera body. I felt quite unencumbered and in touch with my surroundings in the warm, fine morning.

Before long, this pool attracted my full attention. The water, milky with glacial silt, lapped at the stalks of reeds; the sun, already high in the summer sky, glinted off the rippled surface like a matrix of many suns. I could feel the reflected heat, like I was standing over a hot sandy beach.

Squinting, I explored the pool through my lens, leaving the aperture at its widest and defocusing the image so the reeds faded into the white-green water. I made many photographs this way, but I like the way the bright highlights cascade through this one best. In abstract, the hot white globes look like snow falling onto a grassy field.