Leaf fall sky fall

Leaf Fall / Sky Fall -
The Water Thinks It's a Forest

The surface of a pond in autumn, covered in fallen leaves. But the water has other ideas.

Between and beneath the leaves, the sky and the trees above are reflected with startling clarity – bare branches weaving dark lines through pools of white light, clouds drifting in the gaps. The result is a continuous interweaving of two worlds: the leaves floating on the surface, the sky suspended below it, neither quite separable from the other.

The eye cannot settle. What reads as solid becomes reflection; what seems like depth is surface. The black branches could be roots or crowns. The white could be sky or water or both.

This is the most painterly image in the series without any intervention at all. The pond has done everything itself.

Nature, given a still surface and a moment of autumn light.