In Southern Mississippi, ice and snow are rare occurrences. But the winter of my Junior year at Belhaven University was one of those special times when January covered everything with an admittedly thin layer of ice and snow. Still, the students took pride in their temporary winter wonderland, especially since any hint of ice or snow sent warm-accustomed Mississippians into a panic, and everything, including the universities, shut down.
It was then that students noticed the fountain, one of the central features of the small university, hadn’t just gotten covered in snow. It had frozen. The water was still managing to fall and splatter down into the icy pool below it, but only by spilling out from under jagged sheets of ice that curled around the edges of the fountain’s tiers like icy fingers.
As I photographed the fountain with my camera, it occurred to me that I was freezing this strange occurrence in an ice of its own. Motion freezes in photographs taken with a shutter speed of 1/250ths of a second. The droplets of water that had managed to escape from the ice hung in midair, frozen forever.
Perhaps too poetic for a simple photograph of a fountain? Perhaps. But not for me.