By The Lake

For the longest time, photography, to me, was as simple as picking up my camera and walking out of my house. That's it. It was purely to go have fun and see what I could get. And largely, it still is that. However, within the last year or so, I've been searching for a bit more cohesiveness or larger narrative in parts of my work... not super actively, but it's been on my mind. I look up to a lot of different photographers, and they all tend to share a common trait in the fact that they produce bodies or projects of work that share a common message or theme. While I'd say that my work generally falls under the "landscape" umbrella, it doesn't go too much deeper than that (which is totally okay). But right now, I am looking to push myself a bit further to try to find commonalities that compose into a larger body of work that fits this "project" archetype.

Recently, I made the realization that I have visited my local lake 50+ different times. I've seen it through all seasons over the course of almost 2 years of living here. In that realization, I found that I have a decent amount of "work" focused on this one landmark because I bring my camera pretty much every time. This led me to try to organize that work into a focused "digital zine", if you will.

Below, you'll see a collection of images shot across digital and film that all have some reference (either visually or in some other way) to my local lake: Onondaga Lake. I'm not sure what my obsession is with being by water, but it's a very common theme in my work. I'm always drawn to bodies of water - big or small.

I do want to acknowledge three projects that have helped me reach this point of simply "focusing on a landmark":

1. Willem Verbeeck's Morro Bay Project

2. Kyle McDougall's Slate City Project

3. Hiroshi Masuko's Two Hundred Views of Mount Fuji

It's a very simple concept, but I find it very effective. And, although I wasn't actively in a "project" mindset when visiting the lake, it's been relatively easy to find a sequence or theme to the images I've already taken. I'd also consider this project largely unfinished or more of a "practice" run. Honestly speaking, I don't think this lake is the prettiest. There is a far superior (in my opinion) Green Lakes State Park equally close to me. I also think that now that I've "declared" this project, I could be more intentional when visiting the lake. This would probably result in more "establishing" shots such as signs or local attractions that reference the lake. Regardless, I still think it's a valuable practice exercise to sequence and cull images across multiple sets into a cohesive body of work.

And with all that yapping out of the way, here are the images. I hope you enjoy.

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The end. Thank you if you made it this far.