569 - My Book

The inspiration to this image came from Ted’s post “Pigeon”. There he presented three times four ways to have fun with a lighthouse. All of the images are gorgeous wide angle shots, and one of them has a whale’s jaw in the foreground, lying in the grass.

Gosh, I thought, it’s a long long time since I last did wide angle. Of the three processing variants that Ted presented, the third - his choice, he called it “heavy metal” - did not really ring with me, but it sparked an idea. In that particular series of images I would have liked a softer variant, but contrasted with an object. Something like the whale’s jaw in composition, but an object that would be clearly out of place. A surreal element.

The other thing that led to today’s image is, small wonder, the image of yesterday, “In Children’s Stories”.

It was clear now that I’d do a wide angle shot, it was clear that I would do it from the tripod, using HDR if necessary (which it was not), and the idea of the forest, of green filtered light, still kept me.

That was the concept. An image in the forest, and in the foreground an out-of-place object. Now I needed only two things, an object and a place. Thinking of yesterday, I first thought about a children’s toy, ideally an old, damaged doll. This would have given an element of danger, but unfortunately I had no doll. Hmm … must remember to find one.

From there it was not far to the book. It would have to be bound in red, preferably a big old book, if at all possible something that would survive lying on the ground, and so I finally selected the Collected Works of Shakespeare, that I had once bought very cheaply.

The first place that came to my mind was the gorge where I have shot a series of images about 16 months ago (see “Quake in a Gorgeous Gorge”, “Down Again”, “Probing Deeper” and “Substitutions”). Forest, water, book. Looked good to me. The only problem is, that I have recently seen wood workers around that place. I wanted to avoid any traces of human presence, thus I decided to simply try my luck with a new place.

The first choice was another gorge, but that one was completely inaccessible, at least from the side that I tried. I gave it up for today and instead drove to another place that I know. I have shot “Logging Again” there and almost a year later “Happy Birthday”. There is no water, but the logs would do as well.

On my way there, about two curves before, I found what you see here. Water. Not waterfalls, not even much water, but I absolutely loved how the water repeated yesterday’s metaphor of the way. Here we are now.

The Song of the Day is “My Book” from the 1990 Beautiful South album “Choke”. See Paul Heaton perform it in the original video on YouTube.

Oh, by the way, it’s “Richard III” where the book came to rest. Whatever that means.