I like to take photos in/of puddles! It's really easy for me to intellectualise the whole thing (and I think there's lots of interesting things about my practice) but I got into to have a hobby that was a little more chilled out on that front. I'm mostly active on IG as @puddle_boi
I'd also love to see what other people do for photography/other's photography you enjoy.
You know, I didn't get these at all when I first saw them. But your photography got better with each take and the collection of these puddle photos came to be a lot more than what the photos were individually, and I started liking them more.
Have you "intellectualised" the thing using your experience with photocopiers before? I have a hunch that it would be a beautiful way to think about reflections and photography.
Strangely, I started taking puddle photos about a month after I started working on photocopiers! I hadn't made any links between the two at the time, but with the benefit of some hindsight I think you're right to suggest comparison.
The thing about photocopiers is that any aberration in the multi-stage printing process will make its way through all the subsequent stages, and so the trick to repairing them is knowing which stage created the problem. Puddle photos are the same, except that instead of aberrations getting in the way, they are features I can frame around.
The 4 kind of moving parts to it are, in order of distance:
Pulling focus to any of these points with the camera, for example, will create very differemt images. For example, in the top photo, most of the image is out of focus, but the gutter closest to the camera is sharp, which makes the whole reflection very soft. The other photo has a really wide field, so the clouds and rocks are all in focus and 'flatten' the image, bringing multiple planes into a more 2D space
That's a beautiful architecture of the puddle photography process. I think it would be perfect to set up an interactive installation for one of your exhibits where people can explore the dynamics of these "moving parts". You could set up a puddle and a polaroid camera for people to take photos, and even let them make their own puddles before doing so!
It's funny you mention that because I did a series with a friend who is a sculptor, and when we exhibited together we set up his sculptures in shallow water so people could do that at the gallery! The weird part was that it was really hard to convince people to take their own photos.
I think having spent a lot of time in meme culture online, I assumed that remixing etc would have been a natural reaction being presented with your own premade puddle, but people very much seemed to think that it was somehow my 'space' and that they wouldn't dare intrude.
Hahaha yeah! I jump at the opportunity to add to any art exhibition like that too, but it does seem like it's hard to convince people to make art (even though I know they want to and would enjoy it!).
