Fountain Hills Fountain

Author's Comments

The fountain runs for fifteen minutes at the top of the hour, and that is the entire window. You either are there for it or you are not. I have learned to arrive forty minutes early and walk the lake, scouting the angle that puts the McDowells where I want them and the sun at my back, because once the column goes up the clock starts and the light does not wait. Morning is the hour. Specifically morning in late winter or early spring, when the desert air is still cold enough to hold the mist and the sun is low enough to drive a rainbow through it. The east side of the lake is where I usually end up. From there the water rises against the mountains rather than against the sky, and the column reads as a thing with weight rather than just a stripe of white. Four Peaks sits in the distance with that particular blue-violet that the Sonoran Desert does so well in the cooler months. Long exposures soften the column into something closer to smoke. Faster shutter speeds break it into individual droplets and rainbow fragments. Both are worth making. The detail shots are the ones I did not expect to like - the base of the plume where the water is still organized, the gulls that sometimes circle through the mist, the way the surface of the lake recovers in the minute after the fountain shuts off. It is a strange subject, honestly. An engineered geyser in a planned community. But the desert light does not care what made the water, and at seven in the morning in February with Four Peaks behind it, this place gives you a photograph that nowhere else can.

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