8 - My Vision is Blurred



Many years ago, when I was in France, driving along the river Loire, I was amazed about how natural the river looked, starkly different from all those rivers I knew from Austria. In Austria all rivers that are usable for run-of-river power stations get used, thus most of them are like strings of reservoir lakes, far from any remotely natural state. The price the french people pay is, of course, that they have the highest share of nuclear power plants in Europe. Still, the Loire is a beautiful river.

Why do I tell you that? Because we live near such a reservoir lake, about 150 meters above it, and the old people tell that there used to be no fog in autumn before the reservoir was built. Nowadays we have fog from October till April. Not all days but most days. Most of the time it clears up before noon, many times not at all. Today was the first day that, when I woke up and went into the garden, I saw deep fog. It stayed most of the day and when it cleared there were clouds above.

In situations like that and, voilà, we have arrived at photography, I desperately search for color. In this case it comes from defocused dying flowers in the foreground. The composition is very simple, trying to get the trunk and major branches of the walnut tree to connect with the corners while keeping the remaining fourth corner dark, covered by one of the foreground flowers.