Winter Bulrushes

I grew-up calling them bulrushes, others call them cattails, and the fancy people call them scirpoides holoschoenus (I looked it up!). I’m going to call them bulrushes because, well, its my blog. Anyway, you have before you another scene I came across last weekend when I took my camera for a drive. I actually drove past this scene, realized there were bulrushes sticking out of the snow, then reversed back to take a photograph. As I approached the bulrushes I sank into the snow up to my thigh. The snow supported me after that (no small feat!). My snow experience wasn’t over, though, because I realized that the only way to get the angle that I wanted was to lie down in the snow in front of the bulrushes. Let me know if my “suffering” produced a worthy photograph.

On a more serious note, there is a reason why the bulrushes caught my attention. I like to photograph scenes that show things in unusual or unfamiliar contexts. If something is out of place or in an unexpected place, there is almost always a story behind it. These stories make photographs compelling. We associate bulrushes with summer wetlands. Images of brown bulrushes and their long, narrow, pointed leaves are filed in our brains under “bulrushes” because its the standard way we imagine them. But what happens to bulrushes in winter? The winter landscape demands that we see them in a whole new way - this photograph represents a very different story about bulrushes. I hope that exploring the winter story made for interesting viewing.

Nikon D750 w. Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 @ 14mm