PHOTO: "Shining Ones", Rowville, Victoria, Australia


This is a photo of clouds in Summer (December) during late afternoon. This formation was above my house in Rowville, Victoria, Australia (about 30km SE of Melbourne).

My latest photographic goal is to capture light rays and moving / reflective water (in a variety of settings). In this case I was inspired by the flare of sun rays around the cloud formation. To get this photo I had to measure and shoot the light several times to get the desired image. Of course I also had to patiently wait to see how the "canvas" evolved with the changing wind and light conditions - there is never a gaurantee that you are going to get what you expect. The reward on this one was good - there is light everywhere, and especially radiating upwards into the heavens, to the side of the clouds, and downwards to the earth. When viewing this it's almost impossible not to think of spirituality.

A very interesting thing occurred when I was viewing this image (post shoot). As I have studied psychology, I am aware of a phenomenon known as Pareidolia. This is a tendency for people to see images of things in natural and artificial formations - like the shape of an animal in an earth formation, or a shape in tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. I don't attach any significance to the things I see, other than the fact that they look like something I imagine. In this image, there is a face in the centre of the frame, just above a dark section of the cloud. The "face" is what gave me the idea to call this image the "Shining Ones".

We can live in hope that some spiritual force watches over us as we fumble and stumble through our lives on this earth.  
 

Image: "Shining Ones", Summer Clouds, Rowville, Victoria, Australia. Copyright - Michael Beaton

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