Water's Journey: A Tribute to Tributaries

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Modified 3-Apr-21

Created 2-Apr-21

31 photos

Water’s Journey: A Photographic Tribute to Tributaries

Whereas oceans and seas stimulate my imagination, small bodies of water give me a sense of serenity.

There are millions of them and they are everywhere. By a stretch of the imagination even the gutters on a building qualify. They are the streams, the brooks, the creeks and the rivers that we pass in our everyday lives. Some are cluttered with trash, some meander slowly through woods, meadows, cities and parks, others flow rapidly over rocks and boulders and some create waterfalls. And there are those that intermittently fill an arroyo after a drenching rain. They are tributaries, flowing waters that empty into bigger streams, rivers, ponds, small and large lakes and reservoirs. The waters they channel which do not evaporate or get trapped in those secluded inland bodies will eventually reach an ocean.

We often look at them but do not really see them. Photography helps us to see them in a different way. In our minds a picture can bring back the other senses of sound, smell and feel that we experience when we are in their proximity. It can reveal details that may be overlooked at first glance. It can lead our eye to a specific part of a scene.

Clouds are the atmospheric reservoir of this simple element that makes life on earth possible. They have been the subject of prose, poems, songs, paintings and photography. They provide beauty, shade and drama to our lives.

The pictures in this gallery represent a journey that is already underway. It began in a cloud, fell to earth as snow, graupel, sleet, hail or rain. It may have landed on a mountain, a meadow or the back alley of a city. If not evaporated - nature’s purification process - or consumed and later eliminated, it will travel a few inches or thousands of miles to end its trip in the sea, where it may stay for eons or be resurrected into the atmosphere to begin another journey. That is the cycle of water.

These photographs will look at a small part of that voyage. They will look not at the great rivers such as the Colorado, the Ohio or the Mississippi nor the thundering waterfalls of Yosemite, Yellowstone or Niagara.

What I have endeavored to image from the states of Colorado and Ohio are a few streams, brooks, creeks, mini-waterfalls (and a few larger ones), smaller tributary rivers and the ponds, lakes and reservoirs that they feed along the way.

On its journey water’s flow may be impeded by dams, beaver dams, and other structures. It can provide irrigation for food, drink (including Coors Beer from that "pure Rocky Mountain water"!), power for cities, recreation for many and destruction for some. But eventually it must reach its final destination.

I hope you enjoy the journey!

JMH