Rangefinder Magazine

Creating the Water Garden
Chris Lommel’s Studio—A Moveable Landscape
by Bridget Falbo

For a recent senior picture photo shoot, a young woman reclined on an ornate bench, her silhouette highlighted by light glinting off a waterfall and pond in the background. In other shots in the portfolio of Chris Lommel, portrait photographer in Big Lake, MN, a rosy-cheeked youngster happily fishes in a creek and a casually dressed family group perch on boulders at the water’s edge. In yet another pose, water cascading down a rocky waterfall offers a natural background to a team of purple-shirted landscapers.

Lommel didn’t have to travel the back roads of Minnesota to find these sylvan settings for his portraits. He simply walked out his home-studio door.
Just as Lommel creates his backdrops indoors, he created a water garden in his own backyard to offer clients a natural background for their portraits. Built at the edge of his woods, twin waterfalls cascade down a rock hill into a small stone-lined pool. A creek just wide enough to have to jump over carries the water along a meandering path, under arching box elder trees, to a horseshoe-shaped pond. The completed water landscape will eventually cover over one acre.

“The water garden gives me the natural outdoor environment that I used to spend a lot of time driving around and searching for,” says Lommel. “It’s easier to get to, easier to control, especially with lighting situations, and it fits nicely into the total mix of what I do indoors and outdoors in trying to provide natural, comfortable settings for portraits.”

Coming from a photojournalist background, Lommel relies on realistic settings in his work. “I avoid gimmicky props, that’s not my style,” says Lommel. “I use real furniture that people would really sit on. I carry that theme into the outside and provide as many natural environments as I can.” When on location in the woods or by a river, he was hesitant to change the landscape, not wanting to move rocks or branches or alter the landscape in any way for a better shot. Now, he has the discretion to move rocks, prune trees and stand wherever he wants in order to improve the background of a portrait.

He finds that Minnesotans, who typically spend weekends heading up north to a lake cabin, love water, lakes, and the sound of streams, so Lommel feels the water garden is a natural element that his clients can relate to and feel comfortable in. And it beats location shots by the Mississippi River just a few miles from his studio, where he says he spent time out of many sessions picking up garbage.

“The whole project is large enough that I can find new things every time I’m out with my camera,” says Lommel. “It’s important for the kids to be unique. Seniors don’t want to be like everyone else, so we’re constantly searching for ways to make the portraits highly individual. The waterfalls, stream and pond provide such a variety to help us stay on top of our game.”

Lommel has played around with landscaping as a hobby for many years. But it was his photographer’s eye which planned the layout of the water garden, with the help of a landscape designer who specializes in water landscapes.

“I designed it so that a number of areas are good for shooting no matter what time of day it is,” explains Lommel. “The main placement of the waterfalls and the big pond was intentionally along the existing tree line to take advantage of directional light, simply by having the trees block the light on one side.”

Each of the main waterfalls points in a different direction so Lommel can shoot from the east or the west, although in direct sunlight most of the day. One small waterfall is built into the stream under the canopy of the woods and can be used as a background anytime of the day. Large flat rocks surround the pond, making excellent seats for seniors to perch on, dangling their feet in the water. Evenings are typically when Lommel shoots family portraits and that’s when the soft light from the sun setting behind the waterfalls creates perfect lighting for the natural background.

“Every day I find another interesting spot for a shot, in a new light or at a new time of day, and it makes it exciting for me,” says Lommel.

When shooting outdoors in the water garden, Lommel uses a fill-flash. “Ideally I would use reflectors, but it would be too time consuming since I most often shoot alone.” He uses the fill flash to punch up the eyes. If the subject is in the shade, say under the intertwining branches of the box elder trees, Lommel uses the lowest power of the flash to bring a little bit of light into the eyes and have the shadow detail where he wants it to be. When he uses a location in direct sunlight, the fill flash gives enough light to the subject’s face to offset the natural sunlight coming from behind them.

When creating the water garden, it was important for Lommel to work with a landscaper who had vision– which didn’t necessarily have to match Lommel’s vision. Lommel had a design in mind of what he wanted the garden to look like and landscaper Randy Schmidt, owner of Scenic Specialties in St. Cloud, MN, improved on the design by having the creek meander through the woods, creating many more photo opportunities. Schmidt offered the expertise in the mechanical operation of the water system also. (The Scenic Specialties team who created the water garden are pictured in front of the waterfall.)

In the past, people with ponds had to constantly add chemicals to keep them clean and free of algae. But the system Schmidt used for Lommel’s aquascaping is biologically based. Rocks provide a habitat for bacteria to live on and absorb the nutrients in the pond to keep algae from growing (bacteria is added initially to get the system started), and the water plants and fish do their part in keeping their environment clean.

Using a liner system for the bottom of the pond gave them much more creativity over the design. “We didn’t have to stay within a pre-formed pattern that some manufacturer thought was a good shape for a pond,” says Lommel. Three pumps, inconspicuously covered with a flat rock-like cover, keep the 30,000 gallons of water recycling every hour. Maintenance is very simple: just cleaning the leaves caught in the skimmer next to the pump. Water stays in the pond through the winter and in the spring the water will be drained and the rock bed power-washed before starting up the pumps again.

A main consideration for anyone thinking of creating waterfalls or a pond scene is to build it into the existing landscape. “It’s important to have a real good stand of trees, a combination of evergreen and deciduous, to help control the light,” explains Lommel. “Use different textures and colors throughout the landscape, and consider the size of things in relation to others. A tiny little waterfall would have looked out of place next to my large home-studio.” Lommel’s waterfall cascades down a six-foot tall rock hill and the water, from waterfall to stream to pond, runs about half the length of a football field. Lommel smiles when he adds, “Besides, I tend to do things on a grand scale.”

His future plans for the site bear that out. A bridge across the creek, a dock into the pond with cattails planted in the background, benches strategically placed around the water garden, and plantings of pampas grass and irises are still on the drawing board to supply ever more choices for his clients.

Bridget Falbo is a free-lance writer based near Minneapolis, Minnesota. She writes about outdoor and environmental subjects from her home office overlooking a 10-acre natural pond.