This project was started in 2001 as a way to reinvent my personal artistic vision after a career as a commercial catalog and product photographer. I made natural landscape and nature abstractions of Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The majority of these images were made within the western and northwestern 1/3 of the entire lake's shoreline. Many of these photographs were later compiled into this first book--or rather image catalog (virtually text-free).

This project was started organically. I was searching for an idea for my next photography project and was having a terrible time coming up with any good ideas. I live near Lake Nokomis and found that I spend much of my time near and around the lake. To clear my photographer's block, I started taking my camera with me to the lake as a meditation. I made a few images here and there, never thinking much about them. I was pleased with the images, but thought the world was already saturated with nature photographs. I showed a few of them to others and found there was a positive reaction--not only among the general public, but among other fine art photographers and artists. I continued to shoot images of Lake Nokomis for five years at which point I made this book. It was hard to choose which images to include and exclude since at the time I had amassed probably 50,000 images on this one subject alone, most of those images were made within about 1/3 of the lake shore and surrounding areas. Since the publication of this book, I have added another 300-400,000 images—many of which I have yet to edit. I have another book in mind for the future to fill out the collection of images, but it may be a while in the making.
-Aaron Fahrmann