The Cove

Fine art photograph print of a foggy lake scene with a cormorant spreading its wings and gazing at the rising fog.
The Cove is a mystical place of birds and fish, of predators and prey, of dark and light.

The Cove is a series of open edition fine art prints with accompanying content aimed to help you design a space to escape. It is also a real and mystical place.

Escape to The Cove during your lunch, Pomodoro break, or mindfulness session. I suggest watching the video to establish the setting followed by listening to the audio. If you love it I hope you will consider supporting my work by purchasing prints for your space.

Skip down to:
The Place (Video)
The Sounds
The Prints
The Colors
The Narrative

The Place (Video)

The Sounds

Below is a 19-minute audio file from The Cove to aid your escape. You’ll hear a variety of birds and wildlife, including the following: American crow, Eastern chipmunk, great blue heron, double-crested cormorant, belted kingfisher, Eastern towhee, fox squirrel (chewing, barking, dropping nut shells), song sparrow, Canada goose, Carolina wren, gizzard shad (splashing), blue jay, Northern cardinal, Eastern screech-owl, Carolina chickadee, and killdeer. There is a little bit of background noise from distant traffic. It has been suppressed to the extent possible. Many sounds are subtle. Headphones are recommended but not essential.

The Cove Mindfulness Audio

The Prints (Open Edition)

  • Home office mockup of fine art prints from The Cove, a series of prints about a place.
  • Home office mockup of fine art prints from The Cove, a series of prints about a place.
  • Exhibition Hall / Viewing Room mockup of fine art prints from The Cove, a series of prints about a place.
  • Home mockup of fine art prints from The Cove, a series of prints about a place.

Click on an image below for ordering information and color palettes. Please contact me if you would like to order color offerings in black and white instead.

PRINTS

The Colors

The colors of The Cove are subtle blues along with black, white, and grays. Below is the combined color palette for all of the color images. Click/tap the image for HEX codes to aid your space design. You can find the color palettes for individual (color) images by clicking on them in the gallery above. Please note that my images are processed for a white point of 6500 Kelvin. If your room light is warmer or cooler, colors will be affected accordingly. There are multiple resources online to help you find other colors that compliment these (e.g., ColorKit). There are also resources to help you find the closest paint colors from popular manufacturers (e.g., EasyRGB.com, El Painto).

The Cove Color Palette Click/Tap for HEX Codes (opens new tab)

The Narrative

The Cove is a mystical place tucked away towards the back of many of our inland lakes. Its not quite in the backwaters but well off the main lake. The stumps define this place. They are the structure in an otherwise uniform three dimensional expanse. It’s a place of water and forest, of birds and fish, of predators and prey, of dark and light.

You arrive before dawn when the fog still drifts in waves across the surface. The air is cool and damp but not unpleasantly so. The water is calm. The Cove is quiet.

As the pre-dawn sky brightens, deep blue tones become reflected in the water and in the deep shadows of the forest. The stumps come into view as the songbirds start their morning chorus.

As day breaks the chipmunks and squirrels in the surrounding forests chime in. A screech-owl moans out its eerie call in response to the cheery cackling of the crows and blue jays. The subtle blues quickly give way to harsh contrast.

A flock of cormorants perch on stumps and standing dead trees in The Cove. They are a hilarious bunch, looking this way and that, jumping down from their perch and then back up. At the same time they are truly majestic. The sight of a cormorant perched on a stump in the rising haze, spreading its wings to take in the sun’s rays is spiritual and moving.

The fog lifts but leaves behind a shifting haze in its stay. The whole scene turns into a misty black and white panorama.

Facing the sun, the stumps become nearly black, backed by the shifting haze that is pure white at its thickest. The stumps have a character of their own. The clusters and angles suggest that many are not tree trunks but tops of trees instead.

Each one has a story. A history of competition with its neighboring trees, of survival and growth, branching up for the sun, rooting down for water, nutrients, and structural stability. A seemingly endless number of factors, conditions, and coincidences had to come together for this tree to deliver this particular arrangement of projected branches.

Below the water, they undoubtedly host a plethora of periphyton, moss, aquatic insects, and other tiny beings that provide a base for the aquatic food web. They also provide critical structure for predatory fish from which to hunt for baitfish, keeping their numbers in check.

A pair of belted kingfishers scream and chatter their way across surface of the water eventually choosing a perch from which to survey their misty territory. A stoic great blue heron stands statue-like in the shallows waiting for an unsuspecting gizzard shad or sunfish to cruise by.

As the air warms the haze slowly dissipates, giving way to a gentle breeze and subtle ripples find their way across The Cove. The black and white scene slowly warms in tone, taking on light shades of orange and yellow that give way to light blues in the distance. Day takes over for morning, the cormorants set out to find some breakfast, and the true majesty of The Cove fades away…until tomorrow.

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