Sunset bench
- 📍 Location: Les Petites Rivières, Le Vésinet, Yvelines, France
- 📅 Date: 2020
The park had gone completely over to red. Leaves on the ground, leaves still on the branches, and a low sun coming through both, so that the light arriving at the bench had already been filtered twice and carried the colour with it.
I framed with the leaf litter taking the whole bottom half and the bench sitting on the right, turned slightly away. Placing it off centre and at an angle keeps it from becoming a symbol; it stays a bench in a park rather than an illustration of solitude.
The sun is just visible between the trunks as a small burst. I stopped down to hold it as a star rather than a glare, because at this colour temperature an uncontrolled highlight would have gone straight to white and broken the red.
The whole scene lasted about two weeks and I photographed it several times that autumn. What I like about this frame is that nothing in it is remarkable — it is an ordinary municipal park on a good evening, which is most of what there is to photograph if you are paying attention.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
