Ripples in Waller Creek

Today’s photograph is the last of the twelve that are currently on display at Austin’s Elisabet Ney Museum. When I went there on August 17 to see what things I might find in nature to take pictures of, I was surprised to discover some water flowing in Waller Creek, which runs within fifty feet of the museum that had been Ney’s studio. A member of the staff later said he believed the water that day had something to do with the emptying of a public swimming pool across the street. Thankful for any opportunity, even a chlorinated one, to photograph water flowing during our horrendous drought, I used a high shutter speed of 1/640 sec. to capture the action of the moving water. In so doing I recorded the patterns that the water created on the surface of the creek as well as the secondary patterns that they in turn created on the flat rocks making up the bed of the creek a few inches beneath the surface. And who would have thought that talk of making up a bed would enter into a blog devoted to outdoor photography?

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman

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