Photos of Water, the Magic on This Planet

Whenever I see water, my heart tugs to photograph it and my brain thrives when photographing it. Scientifically, it’s no wonder. We evolved to depend on water. We are only alive because of water. According to the USGS, up to 60% of the human body is water, and the brain and heart is 73% water. I am water. You are water. We are water. And, if I had to pick just one subject to photograph for the rest of my life, it would be water. With 71% of our planet’s surface covered by water, I’d never run out of new locations to photograph.

Water is one of the few compounds that we get to see in three states as a solid, liquid, and gas. It’s amazing because at times, we can see all those states at once. This happens often in winter in northern Minnesota. That’s probably why I love photographing winter so much. It’s the water.

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

- Loren Eiseley

The other day while watching and photographing water, a thought struck me about long exposures. Long exposure water photos show us how the water is flowing, what paths it takes, and the general shape of those paths. It gives us context about the motion of water and where it has been and where it is going. It’s like reading a biography; we get broad brush strokes with a few stringy elements thrown in for fun.

When using a fast shutter speed to freeze water, the photo provides less information to the viewer. It’s one moment in time and we can’t see the overall picture. We’re stuck, not moving, no motion, and not seeing the nature of water, which is to always flow, always change, always wear away the rock around it. A stopped action photo of water is like a single fact, a small moment of time recorded in a photo.

Thinking about frozen water reminds me of one of my favorite outdoor adventure films, Into the Great Solitude, set in the arctic. In the film, or perhaps the book that accompanies it, the filmmaker Robert Perkins says, “Life is what happens between the facts." That’s how I feel about stopped action water photos. I feel like I see a fact, a moment, a truthful illusion of a split second of time, but it doesn’t tell us the life of water.

Water always morphs shape and form. Even frozen water flows, like the glaciers, slow-moving rivers that carve the land beneath them. When we stop water in a photo, it becomes anti-water, a solid that can never change. It sucks the nature of water right out of it and leaves dry photos of a single fact. It leaves out the life of water.

Even a long exposure photo of water can never change, but it presents an illusion of change, an illusion of motion, an illusion of life.

And water is life. I’m reminded of that when pursuing water. When I hike up a narrow slot canyon in northern Minnesota looking for a hidden waterfall, or splash down a stream hoping to discover a new drop or when the late afternoon light hits the fall colors surround a waterfall swollen from a recent rain, I feel alive.

How could you not feel alive when looking at the very substance that keeps you alive?

When Loren Eiseley wrote, “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water” he put words to the feeling of standing in front of water. He put words to the feeling of seeing frozen water, flowing water, and steaming water in one moment.

Water is magic.

Water is a magic that we can see with our eyes, feel with our hands, smell as it casts a calm feeling across our being, taste in every food, and hear its calm as waves lap across a shore or hear its thunderous boom as a glacier cracks and freed ice plumets into the ocean. Without water, we’re just stardust, lifeless and floating on the currents of the stars.

Until next time

I hope you enjoyed my essay. Remember to Reserve your for the Creative Nature Photography Summit today and get ready to be inspired! Click here to RSVP.

I’ll see you again sometime in the next two weeks and then again back to the normal schedule in two weeks. Here’s the parting shot.