Kobe turtle mirrored

Mirrored turtle in a Kobe inner city park

A calming, but not quite tranquil picture. A single turtle, on a stone out in the water, enjoying the heat of the beaming sunlight. A pool of water surrounding the stone that is calm enough to offer mirror images, but wavy enough to jar the mirror image. As so many other images I end up liking, it has an inherent contradiction: an iconically slow animal in a calm scene, but not quite calm enough. Stretching out, aiming its head up, out, and away.

Even in color symbolism, this image stays mostly coherent — the turtle is enveloped in a rippled pond of green reflections from the foliage surrounding it, giving associations of calmness and of fecundity.