A few weeks ago, our kids decided that they wanted to go fishing at a nearby lake. As an afterthought, I decided to grab my camera and bring it along. It had been awhile since I played around with it and I had no specific agenda of what I was planning to do with it when we got there. The weather was perfect, slightly chilly, but warm in the sun, and the lake was calm with lots of puffy clouds in the sky.

As my family got settled in with their fishing rods, I wandered to the edge of the water looking at the way the light reflected off the surface.

That led me to looking at the way things were reflecting on the water.

And that got me looking at how other things were reflecting on the water.

Pretty soon, I wasn’t even looking at the objects anymore, I was just noticing the light, shadow and colors of the freeform shapes that moved and changed as the clouds passed and the water rippled.

It was nice to move beyond my normal patterns of capturing moments and freezing the action. Instead of spending my energy nailing the focus or worrying about exactness, I went in a completely different direction. I think I really needed that moment of stopping and looking for calm. In the constant blur of uncertainty and change lately it was nice to notice moments of peace and quiet.

Calmed by the abstraction – Angie