pond Archives – J. G. Coleman Photography

Lakewood Shimmering (Great Brook Reservoir at Lakewood Park, Waterbury, Connecticut) — “Lakewood Shimmering”
Great Brook Reservoir at Lakewood Park, Waterbury, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

With over 3,800 people per square mile, the crowded city of Waterbury in Western Connecticut is among the last places you might expect to find natural beauty. Don’t count it out entirely, though: the calm waters and wooded hills of Great Brook Reservoir on the east side of the city, seen here in my piece “Lakewood Shimmering”, are a welcome escape from the concrete, brick and asphalt.

It’s hard to imagine that when Waterbury was settled by Europeans in the late 1600s, the Central Naugatuck Valley was still a vast frontier of wooded hills. In fact, townspeople referred to the settlement by its Native American name, “Mattatuck”, for the first decade of its existence.

Waterbury’s rocky landscape made for terrible farmland and the town’s growth stagnated for a century. When brass manufacturing took off in the 1800s, though, Waterbury became an industrial powerhouse —the “Brass City”— and began to grow rapidly.

Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing

Click here to visit my landing page for “Lakewood Shimmering” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

Want to See More?

Be sure to check out all of my work from Great Brook Reservoir and Lakewood Park, including the photograph seen above.

Juniper Hill Pondside (Sperry Pond, Juniper Hill Preserve, Middlebury, CT)" — “Juniper Hill Pondside”
Sperry Pond at Juniper Hill Preserve, Middlebury, Connecticut
© 2014 J. G. Coleman

My new release this week, titled Juniper Hill Pondside, comes to you from Sperry Pond in the wooded northeastern corner of Middlebury, Connecticut. I learned of this small nature preserve not long after moving to Western Connecticut and I’ve since visited a few times throughout different seasons. On this particular morning in early September last year, I observed a beautifully moody display as the clouds sprawled across the sky over shadowy woodlands, reflecting from the mirror-like surface of Sperry Pond.

Juniper Hill Preserve was donated to the Middlebury Land Trust by Mark and Lem Sperry and certainly makes a handsome contribution to the town’s open spaces. The pond itself seems to be well on its way towards becoming more of a wetland than a proper pond, for aquatic plant life can be found crowding most of the surface by summertime. However, there’s no doubt that wildlife still manages to find plenty of habitat here. Hikers and nature lovers, for their own part, find a welcome respite at this quiet preserve on Sperry Pond.

Want to See More?

To buy a fine art print or see a larger version of Juniper Hill Pondside, view the piece at my online galleries.