This 2009 photo is titled "Four Worlds", and it employs a twist on the "Out of the Box" theme with the deliberate inclusion of the tripod leg in the lower left corner. The four worlds are the land and sky above the water, the water surface, the lake floor only made visible through the use of multiple exposures, and the somewhat jarring evidence of the photographer's tripod, which "breaks the third wall" like an actor's aside to the audience in theater.

The image was produced from seven different exposures taken directly into the setting sun from a low position under a tree whose branches are reflected on the water's surface on Arrowhead Lake in northern Vermont. That tree was removed by the Parks department a few months after I took the shots.

Processing those seven exposures was quite a bear in 2009. Cameras and Photoshop did not have automated programs to produce HDR back in the day. The exposure masking procedure took more than 20 steps, at one point requiring four keyboard keys pressed simultaneously. And it didn't work - there was a typo, I discovered, in the on-line instructions. When it finally DID work, I let out war whoop so loud my wife rushed in, thinking I was having a heart attack.

Equipment was a Sigma 12-24 lens, Canon 20D DSLR, Canon remote timer, Photoshop 6.