Notes and Images from a Small Island (Practice 9 Day 10)

Day 10 of Practice Period 9 has been a long time coming.  A combination of writing the first draft of my thesis, bad weather and my starting a project on The Edge of the Sea has conspired in my not visiting Loch Cill Chriosd, apart from a hasty hour or so of ad hoc practice yesterday, since 29 April.

There is mist in the Bay and the air is still.   I hope that maybe the mist will be hanging over the loch too, but am disappointed.  I am surprised that there is a strong southerly wind blowing as I arrive, and the reeds and the surface of the water provide for a chaotic and frantic scene.  The tendrils of the lilies under the water are clearly visible too.   Although the skies are cloudy it is a bright morning, and the water lily leaves take on a Monet-like quality.

I am again challenged in trying to get a clear line of sight to focus on the small moving lily heads as the wind buffets them, the reeds and the water’s surface.  The skies darken and the colour of the vibrant leaves become muted as it rains intermittently.  I take a series of multiple exposure images, allowing nature to paint its own pictures, and then play with different shutter speeds and apertures.  I am hopeful I have some interesting images – ones that I have not been able to capture before in the many years I have visited the loch.

I am really pleased with these images and believe they offer a different perspective and focus on the loch.  One of the themes I have been researching recently is entanglement and how fragments of matter that make up the material work have the ability to be in multiple, mutually exclusive states at the same time.  Matter in its most fundamental state can relate – not in a functional way – but in a way that their reality becomes shared or entangled, even over immense distances.  In this series of images, the reality of the loch and its physically entangled state is captured.