Reflections: Water, Trees, and Sky at Beaverdam Nature Preserve

There is a moment at the water's edge when the reflection becomes more interesting than the thing being reflected. When the ripples and the light and the slight distortion of the surface transform something ordinary — trees, sky, branches — into something that looks like it was painted by hand rather than captured by a lens.

At Beaverdam Nature Preserve in Madison, Alabama, that moment arrived on a quiet autumn afternoon. Shot looking straight down into the still water at the preserve's edge, "Reflections" fills the entire frame with the mirror image of the trees above — tall trunks stretching upward from the top of the frame, their bare branches spreading and reaching downward into the lower half of the image in a tangle of dark lines against the reflected blue sky. Subtle ripples across the water's surface distort the image just enough to give it an impressionistic, painterly quality — somewhere between a photograph and a Monet water lily painting.

There is no horizon line, no sky, no ground. Just water and the world it holds inside it. It is one of those images that takes a moment to fully read — and then reveals itself as something quietly extraordinary.

Bring the abstract, painterly beauty of Beaverdam's reflective waters home with this museum-quality fine art photography print by Bama Price — available as metal, canvas, or glossy paper.