Ghost Islands Mar 08 2012 Now You See Em.jpg
Roughly 80 km north west of downtown Vancouver, as the eagle flies, are the islands of Lasqueti and Texada. Snuggled inbetween the BC mainland and Vancouver Island these islands are, in my 20 years of watching sunsets, never visible from Vancouver. Yesterday around 5:30 pm, as another golden sunset built it's colorful momentum, for the first time I spotted the islands.
It was wierd.
For a time my mind refused to accept the fact that I was able to see a whole new strip of land off in the distance. It was like flipping between two visual realities. Once I'd got the islands in my camera's view finder (200mm telephoto zoom lense for the win) the islands 'snapped into reality. An hour later they were .... 'gone'. (See next image.)
Reminds me of the old wives tale of how, when Christopher Columbus and his three ships neared the coast of what eventually became Cuba the natives could not 'see' the ships. The technology Columbus had used to navigate from Europe to their home island was so outside of their experiential and cultural frameworks that their minds eye could not process the view and didn't 'see' the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria until they layed anchor off shore.
Food for thought for us photographers. You might not see the whole picture until you sit back and make the effort to really see it.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment