Stangala mystery
- 📍 Location: Gorges du Stangala, Quimper, Brittany, France
- 📅 Date: 2024
The sun had climbed just high enough to clear the top of the gorge and was coming straight down the line of the stream, so the water in the middle distance was lit while both banks stayed in deep shade.
I framed horizontally with the stream entering at the bottom left and running back into that light, and put a bank of ferns and mossed boulders along the near edge. The ferns are close and dark; the light is far and bright; everything in the picture is arranged around that distance.
A slow shutter turns the current into a pale thread that traces the route to the lit section. Freezing the water would have given me a sharper and much more confused image — the blur is what makes the stream readable as a single continuous line.
Half an hour earlier this was an ordinary green gorge and half an hour later it was again. What the title calls mystery is really just geometry: a valley aligned with the sun, for about twenty minutes, on a clear morning.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
