Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Droplets


When you're away at a conference or other business event, you live two very different lives. For the bulk of the waking day, your schedule is packed with one intense session after another. You spend time with some of the top people in your industry, trying to absorb as much as possible in the limited time you have.

Then, you switch gears as soon as the scheduled events are over and you head back to your hotel room. The frenetic pace of the day is replaced by a sense of isolation. You're alone, far from home, and there's no one around to talk to. The silence is often overwhelming, and it prompts me to look for things to do to fill the time and push the lonely silence away.

This image is a direct result. I had been hunting for interesting scenes within my hotel room and wasn't coming up with anything worthwhile. As you can imagine, the typical North American hotel room doesn't present many interesting photographic opportunities. Eventually, I remembered how the water beaded up on the shower curtain, and resolved to grab a picture of it when I had a few spare minutes.

It's another strange view of the world. And I hope you have similarly routine targets of opportunity in your photographic future. If you want to drop the link in a comment, I'm sure everyone here would appreciate it.

Your turn: Why do water droplets fascinate us so?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Water is cleansing. Water is life. Water is destructive. Water is death. Maybe it has something to do with all that... not sure.

How well you describe conferences! We travelled a lot this year and have one more trip coming up in July. I room with other people, so I'm not alone. But even so, I occasionally start to think about my family and the isolation really hits hard.

OMH said...

Water reminds me of PEOPLE - no two drops are the same or take the same path from begining to end, even though they originated from the same source!

I especially love watching rain drops blow across a side window when traveling in a car. Always have - I can remember my sister and I cheering on the drop of our choice to win the race across the window.

bhd said...

Fascinates me even more after learning some soil chemistry. Water is sticky. Water will always migrate to a less water-dense environment. Absolutely pure water, free of any dissolved solids, if used as our only source of drinking water, would leach our bodies of minerals.

Anyway, another fascinating microcosm.

Kara said...

Water has always reminded me of tears. They must come sooner or later and when denied they come rushing in a torrent, but when relented too, they come in a soft soothing wave that ebbs and flows finally leaving with whatever had been causing the pain.

~A~ said...

I just posted water droplets on my roses on my blog. If you want to look they're here.

Jennifer said...

it's clean and no 2 water droplets are the same... they are also very calming... playing with water is like a sedative