Shadow

The unassuming photograph above: the shadow of a tree cast on to a yellow-painted structure (along with part of the tree itself) was five or six years in the making. The structure in question is Amiralitetsklockstapeln, that is, the Admiralty Clocktower, in Karlskrona, Sweden.

For several years I lived nearby and at least twice a day, almost every day, I’d pass it on my daily walks with the dog around Admiralty Park. In the spring of 2002 or ‘03 I would have first noticed a scene like the one in the picture and thought I should take a snap of it. At the time I didn’t have a good camera. Moreover, when I remembered to return with the available camera some days later, the angle of light was no longer quite right, and the effect wasn’t the same.

Only in the March or early April of 2008 did everything fall into place: it was the right time of day at the right time of year; the weather was bright and sunny; I had a good camera with a suitably wide-angled lens allowing me to capture maximum shadow and minimum tree. I used my Nikon F80 with plain old Fuji Superia 200 film. I suspect I must have had a polarising filter on the lens to get the sky looking quite so blue. I don’t recall which lens I used - most likely it would have been a 24mm auto-focus Nikkor of some description.