Lost Stories: A Pigeon Grey Day in February
A wintry dose of pathetic fallacy
This is a storybook from the 1st February. It was originally published on my website, Lost in the Trip, because I sometimes put things there too.
It felt like the weather was trying to mirror my mood today and it won. Everything was pigeon grey. Constant rain, very few glimpses of light.
There was, however, a thick, end-of-times mist in the morning. There was beauty in the strange shadows and shapes it created.
These shots are in chronological order and take you from sunrise to dusk.
‘Mesolithic Mast’
I secretly worship this mast. It stands sentry during some pretty biblical weather and always maintains this stately, jurassic pose.
A structure that will outlive the cockroaches, emerging proudly from the British jungle. Thank you, mast.
I’m hoping one day, if I’m lucky, to get a shot of the sun balancing on its tip, like a steampunk seal doing tricks at Seaworld.
‘Mist Birds’
I got a bit lucky here. I was trying to frame the triple cloud colour palette and waiting for them to neatly align, when these birds sauntered past.
‘Doom Sky Farm’
‘Moss Wood’
‘Bleak Berries’
I was flagging at this point and beginning to wonder if the world had turned a green and grey. This burst of colour from the rain-drenched berries gave me a lift.
‘Path of the Dead Leaves’
The ‘finding colour in the murk’ theme continued. I’ve walked past these bright, rusty leaves a few times now. They have a glow to them at certain times of day which I’ve tried to capture by papping them at a wide aperture.
‘Lady of the Wood’
A bump of euphoria at the end of the day.
I LOVE finding strange, accidental etchings in nature.
Lady-shaped moss in a sea of decomposing leaves.
‘Cortical Branches’
Trees and roots, when taken from a certain angle, look like neurons and dendrites.
Beautiful, witchy, highly-charged networks above and below ground.
I hope you enjoyed this Storybook.
Even on the bleakest (seeming) days there’s beauty to be found. I felt very grumbly this morning. Even more grumbly traipsing around in the damp and murk, slipping around like a muddy salmon.
But the moss and the berries and the leaves (AND OUTRAGEOUSLY GOOD LOOKING MOBILE PHONE MASTS) don’t look like this on a bright, sunny day.
That glorious gloom and ethereal lighting can make it worthwhile.