Reconnecting with nature through hiking, camping, and paddling
I wanted to capture contrasts in this image. The bright sunlight filling the upper right corner of the frame versus the dark shadows of the stones. There’s also the serene, softly moving ripples on the water contrasting with the smooth but fixed and solid stones.
Sometimes we can find our duality in the simplest places. Without hard there is no soft. Without bright there is no dark.
This photograph was taken on Hog Island Wildlife Management Area, along the James River, near Surry, VA. It was a cold February morning, just after dawn. While the entire scene looks wet, it was actually frozen. The sand along the shore was a hard as cement and the foam around the river stones had been turned to ice.
During a hike I noticed this piece of bark resting on stones by the side of the trail. I was initially intrigued by the texture and patterns in the bark itself. My first thought was to get a close up of the texture but when I noticed the bark was sitting between two shadows I thought it made for an interesting forest still life.