If something about this tranquil scene seems just a little unsettling, that’s because it’s flipped upside-down.
At 7 a.m., the surface of the Roberts Meadow Reservoir in Northampton was still calm enough to render a mirror-like image of the immersed reeds and the surrounding pines. A slight movement in the reflection of the trees breaks the compelling but spurious hold on reality.
Inverting an image is a bit “cheesy,” of course, not to mention totally verboten in news photography. But as a gallery, and an exercise in seeing from a different perspective, the trompe l’oeil doesn’t seem to be too serious an infraction.
Text and photo by
Kevin Gutting