Stoner

Recently invested in a post-Xmas present to self in the form of a new digital camera, nothing particularly extravagant but the sort of kit that will probably be able to do a decent enough job, and which has already proved an inspiration to visual thinking & making some form of work.

Apropos the earlier post about the ongoing photographic project engaged in by a character in the film ‘Smoke’, I shot some pictures of a local stone circle (decorative rather than of any historical or particular symbolic significance) over a period of a few days under a range of different atmospheric & weather conditions, managing to capture a variety of results: the subject, indeed, is the sky rather than the stones, which merely serve as a pretext for such explorations, although their appearance is of course effected and changed, their forms & surfaces rendered correspondingly more eloquent or mute, animated or brooding, by the variations in the former. The pictorial space too is subject to some change, alternately open & wide, infinite, or closed-in & somewhat oppressive, although the physical space described by the stones themselves remains constant, of course.

The selection of photos included here were taken on January days of (1) low, thick, persistent cloud-mist as the murky light faded further & the encroaching, heavy gloom soon became all-encompassing; (2) dramatic cloud formations & intermittent flashes of sunlight; & (3) a clear, bright, sunny day with, in the late afternoon, the moon having become visible in the sky as the sun began to set.