Yielding to the Current

Rivers have a way of teaching us things we don’t always want to learn. They don’t negotiate. They don’t explain. They simply move—around stone, over shadow, through whatever the season has left behind. The morning I created “Yielding to the Current,” that lesson revealed itself in a small, brilliant flash of color beneath the water’s surface.

I hadn’t gone out looking for this scene. In fact, nothing about the day suggested that something meaningful was waiting. The river was running low after months of unpredictable weather, and the landscape around it looked tired, worn, and stripped of the typical autumn drama. But water has its own kind of presence, and even in its slower moments, it knows how to pull you in.

As I stepped onto a flat slab of stone and looked down into the current, I saw it—
a single red-brown leaf caught beneath the flow.

Not trapped.
Not defeated.
Just there, glowing quietly beneath the shifting light.

The river moved over it with a deliberate softness—fast enough to blur into silk around the stones, slow enough to reveal the leaf’s color in brief, flickering glimpses. It was a moment of tension and harmony at the same time: motion and stillness, darkness and illumination, force and surrender.

And that is what drew me in.

Making this photograph required patience. The light was narrow and fleeting, slipping across the surface of the moving water only when the sun emerged just enough from the clouds. I waited for the exact moment when the river’s motion aligned with that flash of color below—a collaboration between what I could control and what I simply had to accept.

The resulting image carries that balance with it.

The water surges, twisting around the stones with quiet power.
The leaf remains, offering its final color to the current.
The shadows deepen the mystery.
The light reveals just enough.

This piece is not about violence or loss.
It is about yielding—the kind of yielding that teaches us who we become when the world moves around us, when we are carried by forces larger than ourselves. It is a reminder that surrender is not the same as defeat. Sometimes, it is the beginning of transformation.

Collectors often gravitate to this piece because it represents a universal truth:
We are shaped most by the things we move through—
grief, change, seasons, growth, and the unseen currents of our own lives.

Featured Limited Edition Print → “Yielding to the Current”
A dramatic, contemplative work ideal for larger walls, statement installations, and spaces designed for reflection and emotional resonance.