Saturday May 8, 2010

WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Well I’m going to have to apologize for this one.  I’ve said that I never shoot sunsets.  The problem with them is that they happen every day.  It’s hard to find an unusual angle or an edgy point of view.  What am I going to add to the lore of sunsets?

A few years ago an artist friend painted a trompe-l’œil sky on the ceiling of our living room in Connecticut.  We asked for a Tiepolo sky.  Instead he painted an El Greco – a gray, brooding sky – because that’s what the sky looks like in Connecticut.  Well the May 8 sunset was pretty much a Tiepolo sky – the light was sensational.  Shot with a Leica M9 and a 50mm Summilux lens, four exposures stitched together and cropped to a 2×3 aspect ratio.  I desaturated the blues in Photoshop – they were over the top.  I’ve pasted a copy of Tiepolo’s Allegory of the Planets and Continents for comparison.