Published: Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009 / Updated: Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 10:22 AM
Reflections of Lake Wylie
New coffee table book brings lake into light
LAKE WYLIE --
Dan Lefebvre and granddaughter Haley Setzer see the world just a little differently than most folks. And not just because they spend most of their time staring through a high-powered camera lens.
Lefebvre, 70, and Setzer, 14, see something in their local surroundings worth rolling out of bed before sun up for, worth waiting half hours or longer at a time to capture and, most of all, worth sharing.
“I had a vision of this lake and I wanted to share it with people as I see it,” Lefebvre said. “Most people see this lake at 12 o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday. I wanted people to see there's a whole different feel early in the mornings or late at night. I like to think I captured it the way most people don't see it.”
Lefebvre recently completed more than two years of work on a photo book detailing Lake Wylie. “Lake Wylie: Shadow and Light” covers from Lake Wylie Dam up to Tega Cay and River Hills and back, capturing 70 pages of deep green reflection shots, uncooperative egrets, seasonal colors and more. The Rock Hill native, who recently returned to a lakefront home after 10 years on a boat in Charleston, withstood months of cold and heat in a 12-foot jon boat, up to 60 mph wind and even moments hanging out beyond the bow of 22-foot sailboat churning at full speed – all for the sake of the shot.
“I look at it and I don't see anything,” said wife Judy, of Dan's eye for photography. “I don't see what he sees.”
Yet even the photographer with 35 years experience, whose past work includes a small studio and photo illustrations for national magazines, misses seeing some things. Like the impact his latest project would have on a Westminister Christian School freshman.
“I just wanted to do it for fun,” Setzer said. “It took about a year and a half. We just kind of did a collage of old photos.”
In putting together his own story of Lake Wylie, Lefebvre began helping his granddaughter see her own hometown in a new way. Then he began teaching her to share.
“I learned a lot about the history of Rock Hill,” Setzer said. “A lot about history and photography. I learned a lot about just how to get different lights.”
“Rock Hill, SC: Yesterday and Today” is a 40-page collection of images ranging from historic white houses to Main Street corners, from early morning shots to afternoons throughout town. Always interested in history and photography, Setzer researched several locations and shows the progression of Rock Hill, including similar shots from the 1920s and the present day. She even toured landmarks for perspective.
The pair became closer as Lefebvre taught Setzer what he knows of taking pictures, and both hope their books capture a moment in time not only dear to them, but unique to their subjects. Some trees snapped by Lefebvre are gone now, some water levels risen from pictures taken during the drought.
“Some of these shots, the area I got these pictures the shorelines are just crumbling,” he said. “Some of them aren't even there anymore. Part of my goal was to preserve it the way it looks now. If that gets people interested in trying to preserve their lake, that would be great.”
Sometimes the weather was too cold to use fast shutter speeds, while other times “I'd have a shot set up and another boat would come up and wake me, and I'd have to wait half an hour for things to settle down,” Lefebvre said. Birds seldom looked the way he wanted them to at the right moment, and even in time on the water spent away from the camera Lefebvre admitted setting up shots is “all that's going through my mind.”
“Sometimes I just want to go out at night and I would say leave the camera at home, I just want to ride,” Judy said of their boat trips.
The biggest loss, however, came with 12-year-old chocolate lab Sally, who manned the boat alongside Lefebvre for every shoot for two years. Three days following the last picture, Sally died. Lefebvre's book is dedicated to her, and what the two of them learned together on the lake.
Lefebvre said he and Sally “counted our days on the lake in beautiful sunrises and sunsets,” something he hopes he also passed along to his granddaughter and, for anyone interested in doing the same, to an entire community.
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