At first glance, Fox Grom’s huskies seem to be standing between two skies. The clouds continue below their paws, and the horizon is so quiet that the dogs appear almost suspended in blue space.
The original 2015 collection places the photographer in the Murmansk region of northern Russia. It describes water over a frozen lake creating the reflective surface. The photographs capture that appearance beautifully, without establishing the thickness or condition of the ice.
One subject, several distances
The distant dog emphasises the scale of the sky. The closer view lets posture and expression take over: a lowered head becomes the small action around which the whole image is organised.
That is a useful lesson for pet photography. After making a portrait, step back to include more of the setting. The wider picture may tell you something about the animal’s surroundings that the close-up cannot.
Reflections do not need perfect symmetry
With two dogs, the composition becomes less formal and more conversational. The downward-looking frame then breaks the illusion by revealing stones beneath the surface. The collection works because it varies the idea instead of repeating exactly the same mirror image.
A similar visual exercise can be made beside an ordinary puddle or from a safe shoreline. There is no need to recreate the lake conditions. Water on top of ice can be hazardous, and a reflective photograph is not a safety assessment for either people or dogs.
For transparency instead of reflection, compare the clear-ice video from Slovakia’s High Tatras. For another canine using a snowy landscape in a very different way, watch a red fox hunting beneath the snow.
Why the huskies seem to walk through the sky
Fox Grom’s photographs work because the dogs give the reflected landscape a moving point of reference. The eye recognises their legs and paws, then follows the mirrored clouds beneath them and struggles to find the boundary between lake and sky. The thin layer of water described in the original account is essential to that illusion; a snow-covered surface would create a very different picture.
Grom’s portfolio connects the husky series with his photography around Kirovsk in Murmansk Oblast. The near-continuous reflection gives the dogs an unusually open setting, but it is their changing positions that keep the images from becoming repetitions. A distant silhouette makes the sky feel larger; a closer posture brings attention back to the animal. The series is a record of that visual relationship at a particular moment, not evidence that familiar winter surroundings guarantee a suitable surface for dogs or people.
Sources, photography and further reading
Original feature and image attributions:
- Bored Panda
- You Will Not Believe How These Russians Get This Car Out Of A Frozen Lake
- Adventurous Russians Go Camping On A Thick Sheet Of Floating Ice.
- How One Man Is Waking Up In Russia Is Just Epic. I'm So Jealous.
- So There's A School Groundskeeper In Russia. And What He Does With Just A Broom Is AWESOME.
- So There’s A City In Russia Called Yakutsk. And If You Visit It Once, You’re NEVER Going To Forget It.
- Crazy Russian Winter: What Happens To Boiling Water At -41C?
- Bizarre Ice Hummocks In Lake Baikal On A 20 Million-Year-Old Lake
- Welcome to The Coldest Place Inhabited By Humans on Earth
- Fox Grom
- the clear-ice video from Slovakia’s High Tatras
- a red fox hunting beneath the snow
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