Founts

February 27, 2005

I believe this fountain is in the Descanso Gardens in La Canada, California. It is one of dozens of fountains I've photographed in the past decade:

A fountain silenced for the autumn in McMinnville, Oregon.

One of many ornamental fountains at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino, California.

The fountain outside of the Santa Barbara Mission in Santa Barbara, California.

The Trevi Fountain tourist trap in Rome, Italy.

I don't quite know what it is I'm trying to capture when photographing a fountain— something about the play of light on the splashing water combined with the more tactile qualities of sound and coolness I suppose. I haven't really succeeded yet, but that hardly discourages me from continuing the quest.

I'll close with this image of a small pond at Descanso Gardens. For some reason it manages to convey a sense of stillness and chill that transcends the flattened photographic format. It was an effortless photograph that received very little of my compositional consideration, which is undoubtedly why it's so much more successful than any of the images above.