I had a lot of fun with this image. It started as a picture about this incredible sky (one of the categories of special interest for me while out on our month-long canoe trip over this past August). When I make a picture like this I naturally take a number of shots to get the composition set and then typically, and especially if the sky is changing, keep shooting until the sky either clouds over or clears. But in this case, what I didn’t see when I composed the picture was the guy in his fishing boat way in the background hidden in the shadows along the farthest shore. But as I continued to make more images he began to emerge in perfect order – coming out of the shadows, moving into the mid-ground, and conveniently stopping at various spots along the way. I was shooting pretty slow (1/15th sec) so, if he had just been cruising along, it likely would have been a blur but as it was, it was like he kept stopping and asking, “Is this where you want me?” The other thing that I really love is his red shirt – just the tiniest dot of man-made colour in the midst of the vastness of the natural world expressed in the sky. So, this image changed from simply being about an awesome sky to the relationship between the awesome vastness of the natural world compared to the tiny, almost inconsequential presence of us humans and the man-made. And, for me, it was also a reminder of Sam Abell’s classic dictum, “compose the picture and wait”.
While I have brightened the picture considerably compared to what I actually saw, I still wanted to maintain a sense of the excitement and exposure I feel in the face of the raw (and often literally electric) elemental power of a brewing storm. Is all that in my mind or do you feel something similar when you read this image?
Is this a composite:
Yes. Actually, this image is a blend. This sky was taken early on from the original set-up. I kept the same set-up but as time passed and the boat began to emerge, the sky also began to clear. The sky was still pretty impressive when the boater got into position but, in the end, I decided to blend the sky from earlier on with the boater (probably taken four or five minutes later).