The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.
Marc Chagall.
Yesterday was one of those slightly epic days ...
Sander and I headed off to Flanders Fields on an assignment that involved using a panoramic tripod head to capture a series of precise images. I had prepared a folder of lists, directions, and maps however ... we couldn't control the weather.
And so it was that we lost an entire morning of work to raindrops on the lens when taking a particular series of shots. The umbrella didn't help as the rain varied between wind-blown sideways and simply drifting. It was never of the straight-down variety ... a fact I wouldn't have noticed unless trying, so desperately, to keep the lens dry.
Bone-achingly cold, we stopped for lunch. I found myself obsessed and watching the puddle out in front of the fries shop ... to see whether rain was disturbing its surface.
The rain stopped and we headed off again. We covered the kilometres required to find those specific shots, again. And the rain held off. Finally, at the last location and voila, Flanders Fields did what it has so often done to me after a day of trudging about in the rain with my camera. The clouds shaped themselves into something extraordinary, the sun broke through in places, and the landscape looked like some kind of beautiful painting ... just for a little bit.
I didn't manage to capture it in all its beauty but you get a small sense of it here, perhaps. Just as the change started to happen.
