I have posted two other shots taken under this magnificent September sky, both featuring ponds and reflections of the sky and the first fall color. This was taken just up the road from the ponds, where Rt 9 crosses the Mousam River. I love the drama of the heavy clouds over the landscape, and the line of the river and the fall touched trees running at a slight diagonal across. I like the way the small pool anchors the marsh in the foreground.

Unless you want to shoot sea-scapes, there are only three places within easy drive of my home to catch a big sky. You can go to Laudholm Farm and shoot from the crest of the hill above the farm buildings, or you can go the the Kennebunk Plains, or you can go here to this view up-river on the Mousam. This view has the most potential because you can always play with the marsh and the river to add interest to the foreground, and balance the sky somewhat. But of course a shot like is really all about the sky! September skies.

Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness…using my hyper-real preset to bring up the full range of light values in the image.

And for the Sunday Thought: Every photographer struggles with the simple fact that the technology we work with is simply not capable of capturing or displaying the full range of light we see with our eyes. Digital sensors have improved dramatically, and the best of them, coupled with some automatic in-camera processing, do a very good job of stretching what can be recorded…to the the point where we now can catch a range that was impossible in the days of film. And, with some work in post processing, we can turn that digital data into a representation of reality that, when viewed on our LCD monitors, gives the impression of catching the full range of light that we would see if we were standing before the view in the flesh. But it is still only an impression. The range of light and dark is still considerably compressed. It is a rendering of reality, not reality itself.

And yet it is very satisfying. So satisfying that almost no one, beyond photographers themselves (and maybe some artists) is aware of the compression. A good digital image, correctly captured and intelligently processed for display on an LCD monitor looks amazingly real. When a photograph is well done today, the average viewer will see something very like what the photographer saw in landscape and the sky…and share something very like the same experience. For all it limitations, digital imaging works.

So is there a spiritual side to this?

I don’t think any human being, bound as we apparently are, in time, can come close to capturing or displaying the eternal reality that is present to us in the spirit. There is a light that is love, and love that is light. There is a landscape of unending possibility, with wonder moving up over the horizon like clouds in a September sky. Like the digital imaging of light, our ability to express the light of the spirit, the landscape of the spirit, is limited by the technology. We are the technology. We are too small to hold it all. The best we can do is to capture a compressed range of what we experience in the spirit and process it through our lives to present, and to share, our best rendering.

And the wonder is that it can be so good, so satisfying. I can’t give you September skies over the reach of the Mousam…but if I try, if I do my best with the technology I have, I can come close. I can’t give you the infinite love that is the light of the eternal landscape, but if I try, if I do my best with what I have, I might come close.

There might even be a bit of that eternal light caught in these words and in this image of September skies!