Little Bang Theory

Two Scoops. November 30, 2008

Walking in the woods today, just off the road, I found this intriguing rock formation, two adjacent conical scoops carved out of a horizontally laid schist:

It seemed obvious to me that they hadn’t been carved by the little stream at their base, but rather by the West Branch of the Deerfield River, which was across the road and fifteen feet down the bank.  I’m sure that at a time not so long ago, geologically speaking, the river had been up here.  It had raged past these rocks, had its way with them and moved on, toward the sea, toward the center of the Earth.

But what wasn’t obvious to me, either in this test-shot for scale and to evaluate the paltry light or in the being there, was how to capture the dually curved rock faces, how to share some of the emotion generated by the potential energy inherent in their relief.

I settled on an angle which seemed to capture some measure of it…

Tweaked the framing…

And then saw this perception of How It Was, in the way that most of the photos which I like come to me, as a whisper, a revelation, the sudden gift of sight:

Something about this simple distillation says more to me about the rockforms which are excluded from view than the shots which included them.

I wonder if anyone else will see it that way.