Winter XXIII. Summer in winter + Photography and light

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Winter XXII. Puritanism

All through the morning, the air was held in an ominous stillness. Sitting over my books, I seemed to feel the silence; when I turned my look to the window, I saw nothing but the broad, grey sky, a featureless expanse, cold, melancholy. Later, just as I was bestirring myself to go out for an afternoon walk, something white fell softly across my vision. A few minutes more, and all was hidden with a descending veil of silent snow.

It is a disappointment. Yesterday I half believed that the winter drew to its end; the breath of the hills was soft; spaces of limpid azure shone amid slow-drifting clouds, and seemed the promise of spring. Idle by the fireside, in the gathering dusk, I began to long for the days of light and warmth. My fancy wandered, leading me far and wide in a dream of summer England...

A pathway leads me by the winding of the river Ouse. Far on every side stretches a homely landscape, tilth and pasture, hedgerow and clustered trees, to where the sky rests upon the gentle hills. Slow, silent, the river lapses between its daisied banks, its grey-green osier beds. Yonder is the little town of St. Neots. In all England no simpler bit of rural scenery; in all the world nothing of its kind more beautiful. Cattle are lowing amid the rich meadows. Here one may loiter and dream in utter restfulness, whilst the great white clouds mirror themselves in the water as they pass above...

It is all but dark. For a quarter of an hour I must have been writing by the glow of firelight reflected on my desk; it seemed to me the sun of summer. Snow is still falling. I see its ghostly glimmer against the vanishing sky. To-morrow it will be thick upon my garden, and perchance for several days. But when it melts, when it melts, it will leave the snowdrop. The crocus, too, is waiting, down there under the white mantle which warms the earth.

Alpha.

I love that one of the most evocative passages about summer falls in the midst of winter, when you miss and appreciate what you don’t have. 

What we don’t have here is snow, so I love the passages about that. In my 62 years I’ve passed 12 years in places with snowy winters. Add maybe 50 days spent vacationing or working where winter truly held sway. For me there is something magical about a snowfall. Only snow has the ability to totally alter a landscape -- country or city -- in a few hours. Snow is lovely on the ground and it makes the bleakest land or cityscape look perfect. But it’s the silence of a heavy snowfall that I miss most.

As a kid, however, it was the thaw and refreeze cycle, that most attracted my attention. It was my duty, as I saw it, to break, each morning on my way to school, as much of the ice that had formed over yesterday’s gutter puddles as humanly possible. How often in life does nature contrive to give you fresh toys to break every morning?

Photography and light.

Today was sunny and while walking I was struck by the beauty of a stone tiled wall. I actually stopped to admire it, only to realize that there was actually nothing exceptional about the stone except that the low, mid-day sun was hitting it at just the right angle to accentuate every detail of the very uneven surface.

It is something of a tautology to observe that photography is all about light -- photography is by definition the capturing of light to reveal images -- but it’s so much more than just that. Every photograph, bad or good or ridiculous, is a snapshot of light, but, when I look at my own photography, the best images are the ones where light is the actual focus. I once advised someone to ignore subject -- the “things” you can photograph -- and just look for the light. Where the light is doing interesting things is where you will find your picture.

Of course you can always fix things “in post,” which is easier now with Photoshop and other digital tools, but has always been a crucial part of darkroom photography. I was shocked to learn, long ago, that printing classic images by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams required following pages of notes about dodging and burning and other techniques to produce the desired result. I’ve done some of that (and perhaps I should have done more) but I’ve always preferred to let the light do what it wants to do.

Videographers, and still photographers as well, use lights or reflectors to bounce light on to a subject they are required to capture. I have no problem with this and if you have to photograph specific things, you should take steps to properly light those things. The results, when you don’t, are vile and yet I know people, who consider themselves professional photographers, who can not see this. I don’t even know what to say to them. I know I’m blind to so many things -- grammatically, for example -- but how can you be blind to light?

You know who made this point best? The artist character Elstir in Proust's Lost Time: Damn! I really thought I had a chance of finding that quote, but no. I think they are looking at a painting of boats and Marcel observes (perhaps) that Elstir really just sees the light and color that appeals to him and ignores the rest. He prefers certain clothes (bright white maybe) because they work so well on canvas. Well, that was helpful.

The point is: painters paint color and photographers capture light. Or at least that’s what I happen to like.

Next: Winter XXIV. Time and money.