Evensong: a composition that is a crossover photo with music.

Taking this image was dead easy, just two almost identical images later combined within the camera to make a composite 'double exposure'. But of course the technical camera bit doesn't tell the whole story. While I did not work hard at the computer to create this image there really is no rule that says that sweat is superior to smart. I pulled this image from previous experience, from curiosity and a strong drive to experiment. I visualized this image in my mind first, in picture form, not in plodding words, so quick and easy was my visual path that interests me not simply as beauty but as thought.

'Evensong', as I called this image, is the music for Vespers, that end of day religious service that would have been found in the monasteries of the Middle Ages; the marking of the close of a day's work and the beginning of the shadow times before the dark. For me then, it has symbolic value as well.

As this was a musical piece, you can see the colour, the lines and textures, the rhythmical movements that sing in a musical flow and I found it interesting to compare real music which exists through a period of time with this visual equivalent. Music ticks through time, we cannot experience the whole thing at once and part of the experience is to find the repetitions and variations and to predict them. The visual experience allows the viewer to see it all in one blow,a different kind of thing, but satisfying on its own terms.

While this was an overtly musical piece, one can look for the same satisfaction in other visual works, the careful construction of forms, colours, lines etc. that make a strong visual composition to communicate the idea. That's half the satisfaction for the maker and for the viewer.