WINTER LIGHT
A song from Shakespeare’s As You Like It has followed me all these many years from my high school days far, far away. Its verses awaken annually in my mind with the sweet and affecting melancholy of colder weather.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
My life has not been too painfully troubled by man’s ingratitude, and I’m reconciled to being a winter person, dreading, as I do, the heat, glare and the blue monotony of summer. My friend Ken Helms, Ansel Adams’ son-in-law, calls it California Boring Blue.
I love the colors and tones of winter, and their constant transformations. The light becomes more intimate, more especially adjusted as a personal gift to my moods; and I adore the movement, clouds, winds and the suddenness of change.
I am a meteorological dynamist. If you’re looking for company on a beach walk at high tide in the rain, I’m your man.
For several years I’ve been mulling over the sights of winter, wondering how I could make images that are especially meaningful to me. As a coastal city dweller, I like my winter walks to end with hot sustenance in warm places.
And so, to make these images, I had to arrive at several crucial decisions. All of the images would be made within either walking distance or a short drive from my California home. I would therefore have no access to fields of snow, or bare forests, or cute children on toboggans. I would deliberately choose to forego the pleasures of depicting nuns under umbrellas, weighty cumulus over Yosemite, or sailboats bent over from the force of storms. Lastly, I would use only a small digital point-and-shoot camera that would comfortably fit my jacket pocket.
Our California winters are not lengthy. As I write, on a cool autumn day, I am filled with anticipation. Here, then, are my memories and expectations of a Bay Area winter.
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© Raphael Shevelev. All Rights Reserved. Permission to reprint is granted provided the article, copyright and byline are printed intact, with all links visible and made live if distributed in electronic form.
Raphael Shevelev, FRPS, is a California based fine art photographer, digital artist and writer on photography and the creative process. He is known for the wide and experimental range of his art, and an aesthetic that emphasizes strong design, metaphor and story. His photographic images can be seen and purchased at www.raphaelshevelev.com/galleries
