Every
photographer hopes for spectacular lighting conditions and weather
that is kind to his or her composition. The plain fact is that we
don’t always get those things (I was sunny when I left Adelaide,
and the grey skies and rain began at the first stop, Melbourne), and
we work with what we have—making a silk purse from a sow’s ear at
least some of the time! But when you’ve travelled across the world
and have a particular day available for walking out and shooting
what’s there, you make what the conditions give you, and with any
luck you can come up with something that’s worth looking at. This
was my first day in Sunderland in November 2011 (I don’t have
accurate dates, I forgot to set date and time when I cleared the
flashcard for the trip!), and I would be occupied at the conference
at the university from the following day, so this was it—sight
seeing, if possible, through mist and drizzle. Well, I went out and
walked, and I shot all sorts—Roker Park, Mowbray Park, the
Wintergardens, the museum, street scenes, the river, the foreshore.
It’s the same outing as my post “Nature’s Effortless Drama,”
and one or two others. This is a view over the lower river, looking
out into the North Sea. Sunderland is a busy port for shipping, and
the river is a highway for trade. This picture has almost the texture
of a watercolour, created by a buildup of washes to depict the flat,
misty conditions. This is what it looked like, and I recorded the
thick, hazy day in all its glory. I think there is aesthetic appeal
in this—the starkness, the apparent “hardness” of the day,
metaphorical, if you will, of the bulwark of human industriousness
against the impersonal forces of nature. A bright, sunny day would
give this view a very different emotional context, but here the
dreary weather asks the viewer to think more deeply about the scene.
Colour and contrast were adjusted slightly in Irfanview. Fuji FinePix
S5600. Image by Mike.
