My 2009 trip to Reelfoot Lake, aka Lotus Lake, was a great success. I was genuinely inspired by the incredible beauty and diversity of the lotus plants in all stages of life from bud to bloom to dead curling leaves. (Yes, I think the dead and dying leaves of a lotus plant have a kind of beauty that is hard to match.) This year, my friend Maggie and I went about a week later in the season as I wanted to experience the lotus plants in a further state of decay. Of course, many were fresh and alive, but the diversity was greater after only a week. When we arrived at the lake, our fist stop was the boat dock where we began our shoot last year. However, I was taken aback to find very few lotus plants and no flowers at all. The only sign of the lotus were some pads and leaves growing up around the algae. These had their own beauty, but I had anticipated seeing flowers too. Here are a couple of representative shots from the boat dock. (Note that you can click on any of these images to enlarge them)

Next, we went to a pier just up the road that the previous year yielded some images of lotuses for as far as the eye could see. Here we found more lotus plants than at the dock, but no flowers. I did see a few scattered buds, but nothing was in bloom. We weren't quite sure what to do, so we drove to the other side of the lake and there we found a similar sight to what we had experienced last year, although the some of the plants and leaves were showing more decay. Here we did find some open lotus flowers. Here's an example:

You can see that the algae on this part of the lake was quite thick near the shore. We finally were told by one of the locals that the reason for fewer plants and blooms this year was the heavy rains, which brought the water level higher. The lotus plants couldn't sustain these levels and many of them died before they could thrive above water. The next morning we rented a boat, and headed out onto the lake, where we found enough interesting leaves and blooms to have what we both considered a successful shoot. Personally, I thought the diversity was more interesting this year, even though we never saw the "miles and miles" of lotus flowers this time around.

One of the most fun parts of our shoot was seeing and photographing a white egret that spent a lot of time near the pier fishing. Here are a couple of shots:

To see more of my Reelfoot Lake photos, visit my Picasa album by clicking here.
Now to decide on what to paint!