The Arnold, California, area is in a pine forest just seven miles South of Big Trees National Park, on Highway 4. A twenty minute walk from our vacation house there gets me to our HOA lake, Fly in Acres Reservoir.
Recently, more than ever, my son and I have been working on our relationship and starting to accept that both of us want to be the best dad and son for each other rest of our lives, but somehow we have lost our way and are still treading water in square one.
The winding streets to the “lake” and surrounding areas are stunningly beautiful, especially in early Fall. White Dogwood trees everywhere are in their full pastel pink and peach colors.
I spent the later part of the summer to late fall in Arnold with my son, who was staying up there. We would walk down to the lake with our our dog Shadow, swim to the docks, rest up and walk back to the house. We would talk if the mood was right. Erik, an excellent cook especially for his age, made dinner. We ate, sometimes watched a movie and went to bed.
One day around mid-Fall, we had afternoon discussions that didn’t get us anywhere. Later on Erik asked me if I wanted to walk down to the lake and stretch out. I wasn’t really in the mood for it, so I said I might walk down later with my camera to see if I could amuse myself for an hour or so.
I got to the shallow end of the lake where Erik was late in the evening. We greeted and talked for a bit, then he walked off and sat on a tree trunk further away. I scanned the lake with my 500mm lens, where some of the trees were starting to change color near the shore and their reflections on the water looked promising enough to play around and experiment.
The more I narrowed down the area I wanted to shoot, the more interesting and dynamic it became, especially with fading daylight. There was absolutely no way I could capture exactly what I had in mind in a full frame, so I went for a larger area and hoped I could harvest the frame I wanted.
I played with it when editing, trying to bring out the colors and shapes that I was after, and suppressing the shades that I didn’t want to see. This picture started to come to life very slowly, but when I finally saw it, I had to stare at it for a while as if it had slowly risen to surface frorm the bottom of the lake.
I packed up and left shortly after, taking a few more shots, not knowing if I had anything worthwhile. During the session, thoughts of my failures for not being the best dad and a best friend for my son, were constantly present. I found the experience to be very soothing and matched how I felt at the time.