Looking through the glass
The image began as a small moment seen through frost, motion, and glass.
I was riding in the back seat during peak fall color season, and the window was frosted over with ice. I thought the view through the frosted glass was interesting: the way it transformed everything outside into something softer and hazier, more feeling than scene.
What came back was a small lake on the side of the road, completely surrounded by fall color. The frost and motion blur turned a familiar landscape into something that felt almost studio-made.
The image became language
The photograph inspired a poem. I wrote it to live inside the image rather than alongside it, with the words overlaid directly onto the picture.
For the Utopia/Dystopia issue of NMC Magazine, the layout combined both into a single page. It also served as the credits page for the issue.
I extended the bottom of the image in Photoshop, blending the asphalt edge outward into a soft field for the text, with the credits overlaid on top.
The poem
The In-Between
In the in-between
We are neither lost nor found
We are waiting for the fog to clear
For the world to come back into focus
Forgetting that clarity was never the point
That beauty exists in the blur
Jennifer Yaple · 2025
