Last week, my wife, dog, and I took an overnight trip to Northwest Arkansas to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Obviously, we couldn’t go into the museum with the dog, but my wife did some research and discovered there were a number of trails on the grounds that would provide plenty of things to see and do even if we could go inside. So, we loaded up and headed off to see the museum or, rather, the museum grounds.
I had never been to the Crystal Bridges museum before, so I had no idea what to expect. But, I did know that when I travel with my wife and dog, photography is very difficult. I don’t have time to study the subject, frame up a composition, and decide on settings all the while trying to keep up with where my “travel partners” are or what kind of trouble they may be getting into.
With this in mind, I decided it would probably make for a more enjoyable experience if I just left my main camera gear at home. Instead, I took along my old Canon Rebel XSi camera and 24-105mm lens. My wife had given me the Rebel XSi as a gift many years ago. It was my first digital camera and was the impetus for my foray back into photography. While it’s only 12 megapixels and does not have near the flexibility or functionality of my Canon 5D Mark IV, I knew it would be more than sufficient for this trip.
We arrived at Crystal Bridges about mid-afternoon and began walking down one of the trails. In less than five minutes, my wife and dog managed to disappear. I continued down the trail and eventually found them, but it took several minutes to reunite because they had to backtrack to the main trail to get to me. Finally, we all managed to get to the same location and off we went again.
As we made our way along the trail, we came across an interesting scene: a small pond containing a large number of silver spheres. What really caught my attention, aside from the obviousness of silver spheres floating in the water, was the repetition of the spheres and the rows they created as they drifted on the water’s surface.
Looking through the viewfinder, I zoomed in until the spheres were filling the entire frame. Since I was a good distance from the scene, I selected a medium aperture, f/8, to ensure maximum sharpness and depth of field. This resulted in a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second which was fast enough to prevent blurring especially using the image stabilization feature on my lens. Once I had everything set up, I pressed the shutter button, captured the image, and then hurried off to find my wife and dog who had once again disappeared on me.
I did very little processing to get to this final image with my main focus being reducing a few small hot spots that were coming off the spheres. I also boosted the luminance of the blues to enhance the reflection of the sky in the spheres.
It wasn’t until we went back early the next morning that I realized the silver spheres floating on the water were a work of art. The small sign in front of the pond contained the following description:
“Comprised of nearly 1800 mirrored spheres, Narcissus Garden reimagines the story of Narcissus. In Greek Mythology, the self-obsessed hunter Narcissus is lured to a pond where, upon gazing at his own reflection in the water, he falls in and drowns. Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden encourages us to look past our own unique reflection to see those of other people and the natural surroundings, becoming part of one greater sphere—that of an interconnected universe.”