Abstract reflections

I've said it before - there's a sense in which the camera always lies. That is - a photograph is not reality itself: it is merely a creative interpretation of one aspect of that reality, a freezing still of a moment in time. This is, in itself, a distortion of reality; for we do not experience life as separate, or even separable, static moments: it is a moving continuum, like a river.

However, distortion is not the same as deceit, for it is possible sometimes to capture just the right moment which expresses the essence of a place, or a time, or an event, or (and this is much harder to do) of a person. In this sense it is, like bending palm leaves into 'locusts,' an act of creative transformation.

Water provides the photographer with some of the best opportunities for doing this, precisely because it is usually something moving. You can vary the exposure time to make reflections in water look like molten metal or smudged paint. Depending on how far you take it you can even create almost totally abstract patterns. The picture above doesn't quite go that far, but it is almost there.

What people sometimes fail to realise is that words are often just as much distortions (or at least interpretations) of reality as pictures. When we do take this into account we are much less likely to be arrogantly dogmatic in believing we have grasped the whole truth of anything.