My photographic eye influenced by artistic ghosts?
My mother collects postcards.
Growing up, we used to make fun of her and all the postcards she taped to her kitchen wall.
Since then, she’s tidied up that wall quite a bit. Now it includes only a “small” collection of postcards that are copies of paintings or drawings. They’re all nature- or ocean-themed.
I’m here visiting my mother in Sweden right now.
When I looked at that wall one morning, the other day, one of the postcards caught my eye.
Do you see it? It’s a painting by Anders Zorn. It reminds me of a picture I shot of a sunrise here in Sweden, very recently. We were out sailing in the Archipelago.
Isn’t that curious, I thought?
It turns out that Zorn (who died about 100 years ago) used to dock his boat exactly behind the cliff, on the island Bullerö, where I took my photo. Zorn used to watch the sunrise from exactly that cliff with his friend Bruno Liljefors, a landscape artist, who once owned the island. Apparently, they named it Sunrise Cliff.
Little did I know that when I woke up around 2:30am one morning, I was headed exactly for that cliff.
I couldn’t sleep and wanted to see the sunrise, so took my camera bag and started wandering the island. Seemingly by chance, I found the very best sunrise-gazing spot the Archipelago had to offer.
Isn’t that nice… and little strange?
Perhaps seeing those postcards on my mother’s kitchen wall over the years affected my photographic eye subliminally? Or, the artistic ghosts of the island played a friendly joke on me, inviting me along for this spectacular morning show.
I was in good company. I wasn’t alone, even though nobody else was there…
Whoever, or whatever, got me up that morning, postcards, new and old, are a great resource for researching travel stories. It’s a great way to find out about the sweet spots of your destination.
