Figure 1 – Puddles in frost heaves by the Cambridge Waterworks, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I was wandering around the Cambridge Waterworks during lunch on Friday in search of photographs.  The weather was perfect, I mean perfect!  And the lake was just spectacular.  But nothing was photographically striking me.  Then I made the right move of looking down and at a deeply shaded portion of the path I can upon some very serious frost heaves in the asphalt.

For those of you who do not live in northern climes, allow me to explain.  Ice is less dense than water.  More physics blah, blah, blah … This has two effects.  First, it causes ice to float on water.  Second, it causes frost heaves, where water beneath the pavement expands on freezing during the winter and causes the road to buckle.  This in turn leads, in part, to the autoshop’s friend and cash-maker, “pot holes!”

These particular frost heaves, the result of probably man winters of freezing and thawing were huge.  As a result large puddles of water had collected between their protective dams and these were reflecting the trees and skies bathed in a glorious September light.  Have I mentioned the glory of September light before? 8<}

Well I took a few images, but really only half-heartedly. I was thinking black and white.  But  I wasn’t sure I had gotten the composition right.  When I got home, I dutifully suppressed the color and played extensively with the levels, curves, contrast, brightness, and, of course, toning.  The result is shown in Figure 1. I am not a hundred percent sure about this picture.  But I like the mystery and pictorialist (impressionist) quality of the image.  One is not quite certain what the subject is.  There is a certain element of magic in the highlights on the ground that open up an otherwise darkened place.