I took this photo years ago in my dining room, which became a makeshift laboratory of light, water, color and obsession. I was chasing light and reflection. Not the metaphorical kind but actual, shimmering, unpredictable, light-bending reflection.
I contrived directional lighting from household lamps that I positioned to bounce the light just so. I taped up a warm-toned backdrop to coax the water into catching a hint of amber. I constructed a makeshift system of reservoirs: one drip reservoir made from a balloon with pin holes suspended above the catch reservoir. With this cobbled-together contraption, I could control a slow but steady drip. My camera stood sentinel on a tripod. I sat beside it, remote shutter in hand, like a sniper waiting on the poetry of gravity.
Click. Click. Click. Hundreds of shots. Blurs. Splashes. Near misses, lots of near misses. And then this one. A perfect droplet, hovering midair. A crown of water below it, opening a blossom of water in full bloom. Light curved across the surface like a whispered secret. It felt like I’d caught chaos mid-exhale—frozen for a fraction of a second in something that resembled peace.
This image has become a kind of visual mantra for me. Every time I look at it, I hear a line from the delightfully disheveled comedy series Black Books:
“I am a loose lily floating down an amber river.”
Ridiculous? Yes. Profound? Also, yes. Because sometimes being an artist feels like exactly that. You chase light. You rig things together with duct tape and intuition. You take shot after shot, hoping something beautiful rises out of the mess.
Like a crown of water. Like light bent into a secret.
Quote from Black Books, Season 1, Episode 3, “Grapes of Wrath.” Written by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan. Channel 4, 2000.
