Sunday, June 11, 2006
Late Spring Rain
It rained this afternoon; a steady soaking rain without the the drama of a thundershower. For a short while in the twilight, just before dark, the light was magic. A pervasive deep yellow green illuminated a rising fog seemingly from everywhere and nowhere. Shadows seem to shrink into their hiding places. It suggests a primitive, Middle Earth, light where one might expect Hobbits or Elves to step from the edge of the wood, not a deer. Everything is still and heavy, the new rain-coated leaves weigh the branches. You can track a squirrel as it moves among the treetops by the splat of the drops it shakes loose jumping from branch to branch. That and the distant call of a whippoorwill are the only sounds. Rain put the other birds to an early roost and it's too light for the crickets and night bugs.My digital camera can't capture this light correctly. It wants to make the scene too bright; not the right green and not enough soft yellow tint. Or it want's to light it with a flash. What I really need is my light meter and SLR, but I don't have the film I need.
