I took this picture of the Grohmann Museum reflected in a puddle in August of 2016. I loved it, and it was accepted the following year for a fiftieth-anniversay exhibition of alumni art at my undergraduate school, Wright State University.

This summer I’m teaching a technical communication course for MSOE two nights a week. It meets synchronously online, and I teach it from my office, instead of from home, because each class session meets for three hours—that’s over three hours a night of being “on” in a way that maybe only other teachers can truly understand—so I’d rather work out of my quiet office in the closed-for-the-night Grohmann Museum than run the class from my home, where there’s always something happening (“and it’s usually quite loud” 🙂 ).

Recently, when I left the building after class ended on a night when it had rained almost all day long, there was a puddle across the street in that same spot on the sidewalk where I had managed to get the photo of the museum in 2016.

Now, there have been many puddles over the years in that little depression where the different sections of sidewalk concrete tilt together unevenly. But I usually when see that puddle, it’s on a windy, rainy day, when there’s no calm surface or calm sky to create a clear reflection. Or the puddle’s too small to contain a whole reflection. Or the sidewalk is so crowded with students walking to class that any view of the puddle is blocked. Or there’s so much leaf litter and other debris crowded together in the water that the puddle is more “marsh” than mirror, and a reflection is impossible.

However, on this particular evening, it was late, around 8:40 PM, so basically night, but not completely dark yet. The air carried that slight bluish-purple tinge associated with daylight’s dying moments. It had rained all day, so this temporary pool of water was nice and large. And because it was so quiet (no breeze, no other pedestrians, no traffic to speak of), I was able to notice the museum’s reflection in the puddle and be struck by its similarity to that previous photo in a way I might not have had it been earlier in the evening, had it not rained all day, had it been windy, or had I been in a hurry.

So it was kind of a lucky break that everything came together in a way that allowed me to notice—and pause—to get this photo..

My two pictures don’t form a perfect match, but they still make a fun Grohmann Museum “day and night” pairing: the same puddle, the same quiet surface of the water, the same reflection from the same distance and nearly the same position. I had to shoot the museum from a slightly different spot on the sidewalk than last time in order to avoid the streetlight’s glare, which completely overpowered the reflection if viewed from the wrong angle.

Anyway, I liked my “set” of Grohmann Museum images and thought I’d share! 🙂