Bullrushes in Sunlight
Six Mile Lake, Ontario - 2009

What this is...

A snow covered marsh on a bitterly cold day in January.

My thoughts on this image...

I had to pickup some forgotten items at a friends cottage prior to a trip to the Yukon, and driving there in the early morning provided some astounding low angle light. The sun was just rising above the tree-line as I arrived at this marsh and it was bitterly cold with a clear blue sky and brilliant light that made the snow sparkle like diamonds.

What struck me first were the shadows of the bullrushes on the gently undulating snow, and how the low angle of sunlight not only picked out the texture of the snow but made it glow as if illuminated from within. There is a massive amount of detail happening in the surface of the snow; but the composition and overall feeling of the image is balanced by the simple dark lines of the bullrushes, and their graciously curving shadows across the snows surface.