"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it "the Reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the mist."
Edgar Allan Poe
It was another frigid day in Austin. I long for the warm spring days where I can walk to work wearing the cool comfort of shorts and not worry about bundling up in gloves, woolen cap, and heavy overcoat. Today, the rain continues to come in a bad drizzle. Annoying. It should either rain cats and dogs or not at all. Drizzle is nothing but a weathered tease that makes your wipers smear and drag. So, I long for the days when I can drag my camera out without fear of getting it drenched in sprinkles and wet.
Today, the weather was dank. And overcast. And utterly drab. We've got chilling towers that run coolant for the power generation systems, amongst other things. On days like today, the dew temperature is high enough to let chillers create swirls of ground-level cloud banks. It's very wispy and voluminous. When you get close enough, you can feel the droplets of fine mist that hang upon the air.
It's very pretty when it occurs. It just covers everything in the area. You can feel the mist for blocks around. Feel it before you see it. Normally, I don't get up early enough to take photos of mist. It's always boiling off in the morning sun by the time I'm up and out the door. There's a few photos I'd like to make with the mist, but I have to get over the hurdle of waking up first.
Like the windmill that I pass everyday on my short drive to work. With it's water tower beside it, overgrown with ivy and hornets' nests.
I've been paying attention to little things like this and watching how time changes it's makeup in a photo. One of these days, I will watch as that windmill collapses and cuss at myself for not having spent the time to photograph it exactly as I want. This isn't a matter of a missed photo opportunity. I have the opportunity everyday.
What matters now, is waiting for the time to be right, the light to be right, the wildlife living in and around it to be right. And it never is. I suspect, with this one, my standards are just too high for me to ever be satisfied with the final outcome of the photo.
Looking at the chimney, this morning, I knew the moment was right when I saw the lightning rods poking out from above the man-made cloud front and all the surrounding buildings were under a complete white out. I've only seen this happen half a dozen times. A rarity, really.
So, I took the photo, took it again, took it once more, and finally, settled in on the mist-filled moment that you see above. I like it. It works.
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