Spring sunset
- 📍 Location: Les Petites Rivières, Le Vésinet, Yvelines, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The sun was going down behind the trees at the far edge of the park and the light was coming through them in long shafts, low enough to pass under the canopy and run right across the grass. A bench sits in the middle of that light, empty.
I used the trunk of a large tree as a hard dark edge on the left of the frame. Without it the picture is an open meadow with a bench in it; with it, the composition acquires a foreground and the eye enters past something solid before it reaches the light.
I kept the exposure low and let the grass go deep green-black, so the only bright things are the shafts themselves and the pale slats of the bench. Anything more open would have turned a specific evening into a generic golden hour.
An empty bench in good light is close to a cliché, and I photographed it anyway. The reason is simple: it was there, the light did that, and refusing a picture because other people have made one like it is a kind of vanity I try to avoid.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
