Photo-of-the-Week #72 – Church Steeple at Dusk – Charleston, South Carolina, December 2004

This is certainly not one of the more technically better photos in my collection, but I enjoy “pushing the envelope” to see what I can actually capture in a challenging situation. The photo was taken toward the transition of dusk to night and was shot with available light and the camera was handheld. There is certainly noise in the photo, but I still like it.

In some ways it is a bit eerie. In other ways it represents a certain peacefulness that we experience at the end of another day. I guess it relates to my fascination with sunrises and sunsets. The beginning and the end. The alpha and the omega. While someone familiar with the landmarks of historic Charleston would likely be able to identify the church attached to this steeple, I honestly don’t recall anything about it. It probably didn’t even catch my attention during the daylight hours. Since this was in early December, this was likely shot around 5:45 to 6:00 PM.

Another thing about this photo is that it brings back childhood memories of the Peter Pan story looking out of Wendy’s bedroom window over London. Somehow, this just feels like what I would see looking out that bedroom window. Imagination? Of course it is. But, isn’t imagination a wonderful gift? We see things through our minds’ eyes and our hearts, as we want them to be. In this time of global unrest and chaos, sometimes an imaginary trip is just what we need to get up and face the next day. I’m not sure how those people living in extremely dangerous parts of the world cope on a day-to-day basis, but somehow I want to believe that through it all, their imaginations take them to places they’ll never see or experience.