The Quiet Picture

Finding my voice in the silence of nature

Aug 21

A mean place

Strange feeling. While I had this great urgency to take some pictures, at the same time I was almost unmotivated to do it. In fact, unmotivated to do pretty much anything. But I haven’t lost all of my will power yet, so at first I went for a long walk while it still was overcast, and then in the afternoon when the sun started coming out, I drove to a nice little tarn that I haven’t photographed yet. Or maybe it’s not so nice – it’s called Elaktjärnen, “mean tarn”. I tried to figure out why it would deserve such a name, and the closest I could come was that it was surrounded by a lot of dead trees but I assume they’re dead because of beaver activity; there was a beaver hut on the shore (probably abandoned a long time ago already).

I had company, a lonely whooper swan that occasionally whooped at me while I was walking around the tarn. The dramatic light and clouds faded into blandness while I was still trying to figure out how capture the place so it was just as well that I got a text message from work, I needed to look at a server that was misbehaving. It’s always a bit surreal when it happens… I’m in the middle of nowhere, and the phone beeps. Reality calls.

I waited to see if the sun would come out again in the evening but it didn’t. Until the sunset – it turned out to be a nice one, and for the second time in a row I was looking at the beautiful light through a window instead of the camera viewfinder. That was like the second nice sunset this summer and I’ve missed both! And I can only blame myself for it.

2 comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Miika August 22nd, 2010 10:55 am

    So you say that I missed another sunset too… Well, I am already too used to do that :P

    I gotta say, that I seem to have found my lost motivation again. It’ll come to you too, sooner or later :)

  2. Minna August 22nd, 2010 1:43 pm

    I think I found my motivation today, I discovered that all it takes is the right circumstances. :) If I wait for the “right light”, I’ll be waiting forever (or miss it like last night) so I decided that the light is right when inspiration comes to me. :) (more on that in a blog post later today)

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