Recently I began taking photos for a series on water. As you can see, the initial selection of pictures includes studies of the ocean and Pamlico Sound, taken from Ocracoke; the Chesapeake Bay, near Cape Charles, in both winter and summer; mountain pools in Shenandoah National Park and a fountain in the recently restored Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.

Many of the photos were pleasant surprises. I’m not a professional photographer. Often I have no idea what mixture of light and shadow I’m going to capture. But that is part of the joy—following your instincts, then taking pleasure in serendipities.

One of my favorites shows the Bay in January, with scarcely any distinction between the water and sky. It reminds me of my favorite poem by Ted Hughes—the first poem by anyone that I ever really got—“All night a music/Like a needle sewing body/ And soul together, and sewing soul/And sky together and sky and earth/Together and sewing the river to the sea.”

Everything in nature is seamless. We simply tend to see it as a cluster of separate entities. This photo reminds me that even with our limited ability to perceive the oneness of nature, we can sometimes come close.

Another photo I’m fond of is one that shows a small section of a mountain pool. To my delight, I captured an amazingly rich play of light on the surface. It reminds me of Monet.

I plan to continue to expand the series. If you have any suggestions for photo ops, let me know. Meanwhile, I have other series in mind. One in particular would attempt to express my sense of this place we call Hampton Roads. How we visualize it, after all, helps determine how we define it.

My hope for this series is that I would simply kick it off but would eventually publish photo albums from readers across Hampton Roads expressing a variety of visions revolving around the theme, “A Sense of Place.” Stay tuned.

- Tom Robotham