Finally, an evening that was both warm enough and cloudy enough to offer the possibility of interesting sunset photography. I set out an hour early, taking a few desultory photographs here and there, then stopping to visit neighbors to chat for a few minutes, watching the sun sinking in the sky through their living room window out of the corner of my eye. My attention was captured by an odd snag on a pasture ridge. The most difficult part of the process for me today was not taking the picture (my hands never even went numb — what a delight) or even processing it (Picasa 3 offers pleasantly few choices compared to Photoshop or Lightroom). The problem this time was figuring out a title for the blog post. Everything I could come up with the word “sunset” in it sounded like either a cookie-cutter housing development or a New Age instrumental song title. Not that I have anything against them — New Age instrumentals, that is — but nothing felt right for the image. Finally, I abandoned the idea of sunset, and settled on the fact that it is also an “end of day” picture. There is something foreboding, almost apocalyptic, in it — I am haunted by the image of that strange snag. I wonder what happened to the tree it once was, and why it still stands there, alone against the sky.
