This is the photo I wanted, over a week ago. A golden meltdown at dusk, with no trees in the way.
To get that shot, I clambered down below the house, in front of the tree curtain. Took many shots of the sun traveling toward that hill on the right, over Mayne Island.
Then I turned around to get back to the house, started climbing back up the hill… and broke my ankle after dislodging a rock. “Was it worth it?” someone asked. Well…
“Drink wine and look at the moon
and think of all the civilisations
the moon has seen passing by.”
― Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Photo taken with a hand-held Canon SX50, testing the zoom. Fuzzy wisdom.
On February 27, I watched the sky turn to gold while listening to a Scarlatti sonata (L33), played by Vladimir Horowitz. A perfect moment.
It was a very foggy week. Day after day, the ferries were sounding their way across the waters. The bigger cargo ships also signaled their movements with their horns. Fog is quiet, but it is also noisy…
One day, in the late afternoon, I looked out the window and this is what the sky looked like.
I also noticed a lot of activity on the water surface: seals and birds, looking for food, were rippling the water, leaving temporary tracks…
An hour or so later, the sun was still trying to burn through the thick fog blanket. Nearing sunset time, the colour of the sky started to change completely, going from grey to gold… with the golden results that followed…
And finally, the fog thickened, and blocked the sunset over Pender Island…
Around here, it pays to look out the window on a regular basis.
The Point Store Gallery on Saturna Island, BC, is featuring some of my photos this month, until September 25th.
As an experiment, I got some of my pictures printed on aluminum and on acrylic, with very interesting results.
The day I took that picture, I had wandered to East Point, on Saturna Island and I was concentrating on the kelp. The previous night had been windy, and the shoreline is always interesting after a big wind…
When I looked up, there was a gift waiting for me: the sky. And these people by the former fog alarm building obligingly provided scale to this grandiose sky.
Speaking of the shoreline after a big wind: a lot of kelp ends up on the shore at low tide. Bull kelp, in particular, fascinates me.
Wet kelp is very sleek. Its lines are seductive. I tried printing this one on aluminum; in the areas with light pigment, the metal shows through, highlighting the shining effect of the light.
During the opening, last week, I liked watching people interact with this picture. They walked back and forth in front of it, observing the changing light effects.
More experiments to come.
