Jerusalem

Cypress Trees on Jerusalem Road
April 2, 2011
Photograph by Tom Atwood

It's rare these days to think of anything as mystical, especially a place nearby, something seen every day, passed over and dismissed as plain and ordinary. But there are "thin places," and not just in the British Isles where Celts came up with the phrase years ago. Thin places, like Jerusalem Road near Edwardsville, are described by the poet Sharlande Sledge as "Both seen and unseen/Where the door between the world/And the next is cracked open for a moment/And the light is not all on the other side." There is a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller.  I don't know about all that. All I know is that if there are thin places in the world, Jerusalem Road is one of them.

Shutter: 1/6; Aperture: f/22; ISO: 100; Focal length: 18 mm

Photo creates itself

Telephone Pole
Photograph by Tom Atwood

Sometimes a photograph almost has a mind of its own. This picture, for example, a telephone pole near Edwardsville, Illinois, created itself. It was unplanned. Accidental. Or was it? Is anything ever an accident? The sun was setting yesterday in a sky filled with low, fast-moving clouds. I was trying to catch distant rain pouring from isolated clouds in the sunlight. There were rainbows. But when I pointed my camera toward the sun, a telephone pole was "in the way." But it looked interesting so I took this picture. Or else the picture created itself and I snapped the shutter?

Shutter: 1/2500; Aperture: f/18; ISO: 200; Focal length: 200 mm