“Pillars”

Pier at boat-launching ramp along Lake Street in Fontana, Wisconsin

May 14, 2024

As I have walked the path around Geneva Lake in Wisconsin over the years doing photography, more and more I was challenged to impose a measure of self-control on my compositions.

I came to realize I needed to take a long walk off a short pier. Which is my clever(?) way of saying I was putting piers in too many photographs. I joked to myself that I probably photographed most of the piers around the lake.

I found I needed to stretch my creativity a bit and consider other elements in my compositions. Piers were just too easy – and maybe not all that interesting, particularly if they appear again and again.

So, what am I presenting in this photo? A pier, of course. After all, life does have its contradictions, correct?

This is the pier at the boat-launching ramp in Fontana. I made the photograph in the summer of 1992. That is a long time ago, but my interest in the image endures. Maybe you will find that true as well.

Much of the appeal is simply due to the camera angle. I went to the water’s edge and crouched down. This was not preconceived composition. More a spur-of-the-moment decision out of curiosity, which may be one of the most important of human attributes.

On a not-a-cloud-in-the-sky summer day, the lighting was straightforward and undramatic, so the structure of the pier was the focal point. Accentuation was provided by the wide tonal range, from the white of the horizontal beams to the black of the water.

The fact the pier had not been scraped and painted in a while only added to the textures in the photo. Patterns were formed by the repetition of the pier posts, the diagonal support boards, and the bolts and nuts.

The reflections are interesting and even downright weird. Notice how the shapes of the posts have been closely preserved on the surface of the water. However, the reflections of the white horizontal beams are distorted. Huh? How is that possible?

If the photo has one flaw, the end of the pier hits right on the horizon line. I wish I would have crouched more or less to move that perspective and add another dimension of interest to the photograph.