Enter Connecticut’s waterfall wonderland and let your dreams take over. Take in the blurring cascades, the glistening moss, the summer leaves dotting the waters, the hypnotic swirls of an eddy and a stunning sunburst behind the towering trees, blessing it all. This is the surreal landscape that Steve Silk creates through the lens of his camera and his skills as an artist.

“I came to Connecticut’s waterfalls sort of through the back way,” said Silk, who has covered the state as a photographer, writer and magazine editor for more than 45 years.

“I became enamored in photographing these big, epic, powerful natural wonders around the world,” he continued. “But when the pandemic hit and I was stuck in my back yard in Farmington, I thought, ‘Well, what can I do around here? What are the great extreme natural forces around Connecticut that give you that sense of awe?’.”

Silk heard about the series of waterfalls at Enders State Forest in West Granby; one day during the pandemic he stopped by the state park of more than 2,100 acres, just off Route 20.

“I was just flabbergasted by all these different types of waterfalls there,” he exclaimed. He took out his camera and began shooting.

“One of the great things about waterfalls,” he said while recently hiking through the park with a backpack full of equipment, “is that they are different every day: their flows, sounds, surroundings—always different in every way.”

Despite the often turbulent dynamic of the waters, Silk said being in this setting—and the photographing of this natural surroundings where he was often the only person around— “almost became this meditative act when I went early morning or late afternoon when then light is best.”

It became another world: soothing, surreal, wondrous and emotionally moving.

“There’s a saying in photography—and it’s attributed to different people—but the saying is: ‘Don’t photograph what you see. Photograph what you feel.’ That’s what I’m trying to do. I’d like the viewer to feel some of the awe that I feel. I’m not there trying to document or make a realistic picture. I am there to capture an image that conveys how it feel about what I see, this sense of dreaminess—and even of peace, even though there’s a lot of turbulence conveyed, too.”

That practice of capturing the emotional connection with the photographer goes counter to what he learned at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri and his work as an award-winning photojournalist and travel writer for such periodicals as The New Haven Journal-Courier, The…[CONTINUED]