The elevated highway (US 101) passes through San Rafael, California. Below the overpass, a nether world of parking lots, fences, and ditches. I climbed high on the mesh fence to snap the photo of the underbelly of the overpass reflected, the water probably a shipping canal in the days before the auto.
Related Images: Cedar Break, World without End.
[12mm, 18mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 1/160 of a second at f/5 and ISO 100, handheld.]
In The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Lord Dunsany, wrote about magic beyond the fields we know. You step out into the ordinary, everyday fields that you see all the time. Maybe these fields are right next door to your house in suburbia. Willy, nilly you may be swept into a magical realm where nothing is ever the same.
I take Dunsany’s fantasy as a metaphor for photography. If you are willing to look carefully, and are open to the spirit of adventure, you never know what magical territory you may visit. If you have been changed by the experience, well that is no affair of mine.
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We were on family vacation in a rental house in Sea Ranch. Our house was in a suburb of vacation houses. (Although Sea Ranch isn’t supposed to be suburban, I know a suburb when I see one.) Across the street was a brown field. The fog came in, and on our last morning I used my macro lens to explore the magic that lies beyond the fields we know.
[105mm f/2.8 macro lens, 157.5mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 36mm extension tube, +4 diopters close-up filter, 1/3 of a second at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
