In response to a photographic challenge, I am taking a brief pause in my reflections of the soul and sharing more literal ones.
One set of photographs comes from one of my favorite places: the high school band room. On Saturday evening instruments and their musicians were being decorated in preparation for a holiday parade.
Other instruments’ reflections are captured in the brass of a sousaphone, which also grabs bits of copper and bright color from neighboring tympany and bits of tinsel.
A horn reflects the white bars behind which instruments are imprisoned, making the parallel steel lines undulate in concentric waves. A reflected snowflake light adds another ethereal imprint over gold and white.
Two years ago Jim was well enough to go out and watch one of our children marching in what would be the last earthly holiday parade for him. (Of course he had his camera.) The band director saw us on the sidewalk and came over to us, giving us both a hug.
In some ways such pictures will always be reflections of the way life used to be. (I challenge you to read that sentence without your mind switching into Diana Ross’s voice.)
As I returned from visiting a son at school this weekend I found myself pulling off a road where enormous white rocks beckoned to me from another shore and found reflections galore.
Some reflections seem fairly standard. . . .
This was taken underneath the bridge near Hanover, New Hampshire, where a granite block marks the point at which one steps over the line between New Hampshire and Vermont. (This bridge happens to be haunted in a good way, with scenes of Jim at the wheel and our young toddlers bundled up in bright printed full-body down coats for winter, pointing from their assorted car seats in excited wonder at the enormous orbs which garnish its more visible surface.)
But we were challenged “to head out and create an image that uses reflections to force the viewer to question and interpret the reality of the shot.”
Turned 180 degrees, an inlet becomes a whimsical creature with labyrinthine antlers–or perhaps a yurt in a surreal, misty landscape, or a cave carved out of a volcano peeking from the sea:
And what is this other-worldly satellite outlined in pinpricks of reflected golden light (a photograph I will only say I took during a blackout later Sunday night)? I’m not telling, but you are free to guess.
There’s no telling where reflections may arise, and where they might lead.
Love in the Spaces 
I like the hidden snowflake in the second picture… or was it really snowing there… 😉
No, it’s a trick 🙂 It was only snowing outside, not in the band room.
But if you look carefully you’ll see that it’s now lightly snowing on my blog 🙂