I could lie by saying that I have such and so number of years of experience with photography, but that would be a far stretch considering the reality that this is my first experience with photography beyond its recreational use. When I hear mention of photography, I instantly envision a hoard of relatives blinding me with camera flashes as they undertake the grueling task of recording every fleeting moment into visual evidence; it's as if they are saying, "We were here!" I never quite understood the concept when I was little and I dreaded posing for frame after frame, but as I grew older and worldlier, I came to realize that the idea was not at all far fetched. Think about how much we miss in a single day: we fail to acknowledge the beauty of a cloud as it metamorphoses in the sky, carried by the wind, or the way that with every passing second our world is changing just as surely as we are and before we know it we look back at the years and realize just how much we have missed out on...

Lake Virginia was pristine, shining under the midday sun as I meandered along her banks. It was then when I took notice of the unusual patterns in the sand underneath her translucent façade. I was really pleased with the way that I captured texture in this shot. The ripples in the sand are contrasted by the sleek surface of the water, which is accentuated by the reflection of the sky and trees from overhead. The tree branch at the bottom of the shot disrupts the photo by adding a different kind of movement and simultaneously bringing the onlookers attention to the details in the lower left corner. I could have chosen to not include said details, but I feel like they add strength to the overall composition.

What I really liked about this shot was the color contrast between the bleek inner reality and that which exists beyond the thin glass, where it is green and teeming with life. So many feelings come to mind when I view this shot: entrapment, disconnect and, in some ways, hope. I think that these associations will be what connect with my audience. It's a question of "is the glass half empty or half full?"

This final photo was a product of yet another of my meandering walks (I tend to go on many of those). I decided to be risky by experimenting with perspective in this shot. Due to an unintentional hand slip, the details on the right are blurry, however what struck me about this photo was the clarity and focus of the window in the upper left hand corner.

As I look back over these three photos I feel like all of them are in someways interconnected. Without realizing it, each of the photos that I chose play around with the idea of a surface and reflection. They challenge us to look deeper in order to read into their multiple layers; for only a keen eye would have noticed the faint silhouettes on the surface of the water or the light fog at the bottom of the window pane. There is a simple, yet eloquent beauty to these little "trivialities". We live in a fast paced world such that we never seem to find the time to stop and take in these day by day wonders. Photography allows us to reinvent the world by giving us what was already there in the first place.