Yesterday morning, I did a small hike at the Arboretum. The Vivid Creatures exhibition is in full swing and I could not pass up this collection of oversized mollusks, insects, mammals and birds made of steel and resin, painted in strikingly bold colors. As I was moving from one statue to the next I ended up making an entire lap around Meadow Lake, finding myself at one of my favorite spots on the southern shoreline.

Keeping my Ricoh GR busy as always I started snapping pics and before I knew it I had a whole slew of panorama sequence.

I had not been to the Arboretum for a couple months (mosquitoes can be very oppressive in May – June. But thanks to the 90F+ week-long heatwave we are currently having, there was not a single one to be found. This long hiatus left me in surprise — the lake was way smaller than I’m used to. The lily pads carpet most of its shoreline and push sometimes a hundred feet into the water, compressing the open surface of the water.

And since I shoot infrared, this made the lake look half its usual size while the lily pads and blossoms appear like solid ground in the photo.

The above panorama is a stitch of 8 separate shots in 590nm infrared, I usually overlap them by at least half and stitch them together in Affinity. Thanks to the nature of green leaves reflecting IR light, they all glow white, making the lily pads look like solid ground.
And what was originally as a quick morning walk to clear my head had turned into flashbacks of my old days working in the Loop and going to The Art Institute to look at paintings. The moment I saw the circular floating leaves and the white blossoms I immediately thought of Monet, by far one of my most favorite painters.

Claude Monet spent decades building his garden at Giverny around a single pond, planting the water lilies himself, designing the light he wanted to paint by carefully planning which flower, tree or shrub would be placed at a specific spot. He was all about the light.

Since I had a membership to the Institute, I made my weekly visits to the Monet room a habit, a lunch break habit, having a nutrition of a different kind. So many times had I found myself in the Monet room completely by myself and staring at his paintings for an hour straight. The larger than life canvases of his water lilies were flashing before me as I was taking the above picture of water lilies. Yet again, alone, having an entire lake to myself.

With hardship of daily living grind, short trips like this one can make a meaningful difference in one’s wellbeing. An hour in nature and solitude compared to an hour doomscrolling through social media feeds? It’s no contest. You and I know which one is the only real choice.