Tempe Town Lake

Author's Comments

Tempe Town Lake is the unlikely kind of photograph. A reservoir sitting in what was, for most of the year and most of the century, a dry riverbed, holding the Phoenix metro skyline upside down on its surface in a way that should not work and somehow does. I come here for blue hour, almost always, and almost always in winter when the air goes clear and the desert sky holds that particular cobalt for longer than seems reasonable. The north shore pedestrian bridge is where I start. The geometry there is generous - the bridge cables, the city behind, A Mountain rising on the left like a punctuation mark. If the water is still, which it usually is just after the wind drops at dusk, you get a clean mirror. A long exposure helps. Thirty seconds will smooth out whatever ripples remain and turn the reflected lights into something closer to paint than to pixels. The Mill Avenue Bridge is the other anchor. The arches read beautifully against the last warm light in the west, and the light rail crossing the adjacent span gives you a moving element to play against the static architecture. I have made my best frames here in February, around five thirty, when the sun has just gone and the city lights are coming up but the sky still has color. This is not a wilderness photograph. It is a city photograph, and it asks to be treated that way. Wide lens. Tripod. Patience for the moment when the artificial light and the natural light hold equal weight, which lasts about eight minutes and then is gone.

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