I have always loved abstract patterns found in nature. In particular the patterns created by the reflection and refraction of light fascinate me. Over the years I have shot a lot of images of soap bubbles, refractographs and waves. Reflections in waves can create some beautiful images that range from slightly distorted, nearly realistic images to completely abstract images.
A dozen years ago or so was the first time my wife and I stayed at the WorldMark resort in Indio, CA. This resort has a lot of man-made ponds, streams and waterfalls. The outsides of the buildings in the resort are all stuccoed in a range of colors some of them pretty bright. I noticed on that first trip that near sunrise and sunset the light hit the building walls but not the water in the ponds in a lot of places. That created really vibrant reflections of the buildings and surrounding landscaping in the water. Over the intervening years I have taken reflection photos of the buildings in the ponds on numerous occasions. Even though I have done it in the same location many times I still find it endlessly engaging.
There are typically only a few spots and a few angles in the resort that produce interesting reflections. On some occasions there is a fair amount of debris like
flower petals and grass clippings in the water. If that collects at the spots where the reflections are good then you can’t get any decent images. When the conditions are right however the images can be striking.
On this trip most of the week was fairly typical so the best images were near the waterfalls and the edges o f the pond. The waves were of a fairly long wavelength – maybe six inches to a foot. This produces images with larger areas of color. I also like to occasionally include something on the surface of the water to give the image some extra point(s) of interest. My favorite thing for this is the bubbles that are created by the waterfalls.
The morning of the last day of the trip, just before we packed up to leave, I went outside and the wind was blowing really hard. That created some very different wave patterns with much smaller wind waves superimposed on top of the longer wavelength normal waves.
Since the images are rather random I usually shoot three or four shot bursts. All told I probably took a thousand images of waves on three separate mornings of shooting during the week. After reviewing them all and deleting the ones that weren’t as good I still ended up keeping about one hundred images. A few of them are shown here. I hope you enjoy viewing them.
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