Mist is a wonderfully mysterious substance. It operates randomly on a place concealing or revealing the different features of a landscape at will. The differing consistencies of mist, its thickness or transparency, will allow light to permeate the scene to varying degrees. There is the transformative softening that occurs to objects in light haze, and the near total erasure that happens in the grey or white murk of heavy fog.
Sometimes to walk in mist is to levitate. It is to feel oneself literally suspended in the clouds. To stroll as mist swirls and billows around you, is to allow yourself to flow along with everything that is fluid and strange in nature. Mist enables the discovery of forms that are smudged or softened, or weirdly elongated or heightened.
The familiar and the local is re-sculpted into something unknown and fantastical. To explore this territory visually can alternately feel like a lyrical adventure or a frustrating voyage through a sinister soup, that robs the world of colour to feed its own greyness. Entering a maze of mist
whose soft edged walls are continually shifting as you try and find your way through them is often to be immersed in transience, silence and beauty. The mist may unexpectedly open up like a pair of theatre curtains on a scene of magic or allow itself to be pierced by the sun throwing nearby objects into sharp relief. If truly patient, the photographer is rewarded by scenes full of brooding metaphysical presence or gentle contemplative stillness.
No comments:
Post a Comment