“Often, we find beauty in the most commonplace. The simple touching of water on a shoreline and a few trees can yield something refreshing to the weary soul.” – Ed Lehming

Today I’m going to start something a bit different. At least for me. This past May, after two years of travel restrictions and COVID protocols, my wife and I travelled to visit family in California. It felt like forever since we had been there and simply being in a different place and seeing different things was so refreshing.

Of course, when I travel, I takes lots of photos. Some photos are strictly personal, a way for me to remember and look back on my experiences, others are a bit more creative, seeking to capture the essence of a place or a moment. I will be sharing some of those images over the coming days and weeks.

I’ll begin the series with a simple image taken on the shores of Sacramento’s Folsom Lake, a massive reservoir built to provide water for the city of Sacramento and region. Along the shore of this lake are several State Park which offer access to the lake’s shore and provide a place to simply enjoy the beauty of a lake in an otherwise quite hot and dry region.

We arrived in Sacramento a few days after a few days of rain had refreshed the water levels and some of the areas you see in the image had been dry land only a few days prior. For me, coming from southern Ontario, the landscape was unique and I had to make a few photos. For someone used to this place, it may seem quote plane but I enjoyed seeing the water at the shore with mountains in the background. The rains had also brought many of the native grasses back to life from a period of dormancy, so the scene is quite green considering this is semi-desert most of the year.

It’s a simple image, but I still enjoy looking at the details and seeing how everything just flows together.

iPhone 12 Pro @ 6.0 mm
1/4000 sec, f/2.0, ISO 25