I wake up to another unexpected morning.   The clouds are gone so I head out before sunrise and walk down to the loch.  I walk over the hill to the other side of the loch, through sheep munching their breakfast (still grass at this time of year!).  I find a high vantage point to best capture the shapes, patterns and reflections in the water.  I sit and wait for the early morning light to emerge.  The autumn colours are almost unbelievable, unreal in their intensity and saturation.  I recall that I did not see the loch this time last year because of Covid lockdown 2 in England.

I get to work on the reflections and enjoy seeing them from a different part of the loch.  The rain starts to fall on the dark waters of Loch Cill Chriosd.  The reeds in this area are sparse and less chaotic than in my normal locations.  I play with focus and depth of field to see if I can achieve the images I am looking for.  Do I want clarity in the reflection, which is the subject of the image, or do I wish to simply allude to it through a more blurred rendering?

I immediately start to enjoy the shadows and colours cast on the water by the still early morning skies.  The images start to convey the hidden world of reflections and the objects they depict.  The menacing Black Cuillin, in Metaphor 67and 69, an integral part of the environment of the reeds of Loch Cill Chriosd and the climate and weather they endure, and the Red Cuillin in Metaphor 68 with the vestiges of heather still showing in the reflection in the loch.  It is a magical world of the loch – no wonder people speak of a Sea Monster!

The tree, I had focused on yesterday, further away in the middle of the loch emerges from the rippling reflection of the Red Cuillin.

And then, without warning, a whole different palette of colours emerge from the loch as I cast my eyes in a different direction.  A dark, moody world of the real object?  The noumena of the loch, the mountains the reflections depict or, something else?

And then my attention is lost as the sensory world takes over and I have to capture the stunning blues and oranges of Loch Cill Chriosd. . .

At last I am starting to reveal the reality of the loch and the reeds through the metaphorical powers of reflections – those in the loch and those in my mind.