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Interestingly I noticed that while I took these photos whether the water sitting in the hose formed a convex (bulging outward) or concave (curving inward) shape determined whether my reflection was inverted or not. You can see I am inverted here where the water was concave.
I had planned on doing Earth, Air, Fire and Water in that order, but when I saw the WordPress Weekly Challenge was geometry I had to alter it to Water in week 2. You see I got a bit obsessed this week with photographing parabolas. A very basic explanation of a parabola is a sort of U shape that is basically symmetrical. There is a compicated algebraic equation you can use to plot where the line (or object if you are being practical) will fall. Essentially ‘what goes up must come down’ covers it mainly and you can add and you can predict where it will come down in relation to where it went up to that. I have found personally no reason to use the equation in life although you can find examples of parabolas around. A maths teacher friend of minepointed out that the arch made by throwing a ball in a lob is a parabola and you can say the same for the arch made by the water leaving a hose.
So I made it my mission to photograph a water arch parabola to combine the element of water and geometry! Its not a perfect parabola as you can see, the outside edge of the arch makes a pretty good symmetrical arch and a good impression of one in my opinion.
If you have a burning desire to confuse yourself and/or learn more about parabolas you can find an explanation on Wikipedia here or google parabola. A word of warning. If you decide to do it, prepare yourself with caffeine and a fresh and eager brain at its prime. Parabolas are fascinating, but the maths is best left a mystery unless you absolutely need to do it or have a desire to hurt your brain for no good reason.
Remember if you want to photograph water for Elemental November tag your photos #elementalnovember so we can see them too!
I knew what I wanted to photograph for geometry at the start of the challenge, but it took me until yesterday to get an opportunity to go to the building. An urban pyramid fits the bill nicely.
I also found my house made a nice triangle and inverted parabola thanks to my picket fence (who knew it would be so useful in so many photographic challenges?!).
And finally although I would usually use this as a texture photo, technically the shapes within (the curves and diamond) are geometric. And I loved the photo so I included it. I hope you do too. Enjoy 🙂
Learning the Light 