Shooting the Shooter - Sky Whites
On Monday’s walk, just before we were about to enter bird alley, I saw a sight that made me stop and pull out my iPhone to make an image.
It wasn’t much really, but it was enough to get my mind thinking.
What I found so interesting was the various hues and tonal intensities of the different whites pasted across the sky. There is, of course, the moon, standing prominently at the top of the image. Surprisingly, it is not the brightest thing in the sky (which it often is). That belongs to the brilliantly fine contrail immediately following the airplane. The reflection from the contrail is, I think, what initially caught my eye and caused me to look up to see this interesting juxtaposition overhead. Then there is the soft natural cloud off to the left, and also the two diffusing contrails in the center and to the right of the image.
Each of the elements cast a different “white” to the eye that at the time is not nearly as distinct as they appear in a photograph.
Making the photograph really became nothing more than finding a reasonable ordering of the elements before the airplane could fly out of the frame (which is why I didn’t wait for the old contrail to move so the moon would be unobstructed). Sometimes you just have to take things the way you find them before it all goes away.
Ann meanwhile pulled out her own phone.
I don’t think that old, overweight guy on the bottom left helps her composition in the least.