Summoning

Exposure Date: 2014:01:06 18:51:39;
Copyright: Lex Jenkins 2013;
Make: NIKON CORPORATION;
Model: NIKON 1 V1;
ExposureTime: 1/50 s;
FNumber: f/9;
ISOSpeedRatings: 220;
ExposureProgram: Normal program;
ExposureBiasValue: 4294967294/6;
MeteringMode: Pattern;
Flash: Flash did not fire;
FocalLength: 30 mm;
FocalLengthIn35mmFilm: 81 mm;
Software: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.4 (Windows);
LR4_DSC_7889-1-4

"They waited all day in the courtyard. When it was starting to get dark a man came out of the castle and told them they could come in.

The man had opened his arms in a gesture of welcome, revealing the red lining of his robe. The lining billowed out; it was swarming, made up of lips. Hundreds of children's lips that writhed painfully, whispering their story... Eli's story.

Eli sobbed, shut her eyes. Waited for the cold grip around the neck."

--Let The Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist

There's a vacant lot near my apartment complex. It figures peripherally in many of my photos, usually as a background to my Skaiku and various nighttime photos in my neighborhood. I suppose it is my geographical muse, like Stephen King's Castle Rock, or Peter Straub's Millhaven.

Until last week I'd never ventured more than 25 yards inside that field. It didn't seem interesting. But on a particularly brilliant evening's sunset I wandered a bit deeper to frame some barren trees against the sky. That's when I noticed these incredible shapes.

I was reminded of passages from Titus Andronicus, describing the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, particularly as depicted in the movie version Titus with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange.

And that particularly eerie skeletal hand and extended arm reminded me of Eli's nightmare from Let the Right One In, recalling the incident of being summoned inside the castle of the nobleman who would turn Eli into a vampire.

The swirling eye shaped cloud was, in turn, reminiscent of a scene early in Coppola's version of Dracula, when the vampire's eye appears in the sky as Jonathan Harker is riding a train toward Transylvania while reading Dracula's letter.

If I was a more imaginative artist I could have done this with composites. But nature and circumstance happened to coincide. The original color version is quite melodramatic, and perfectly fitting as a tribute to Coppola's vision of that movie. But it didn't quite suit my personal association with Lindqvist's novel, which described a cold, austere setting.

Odd followup anecdote...
A few days later we experienced an unusually foggy evening. I decided to try a few variations of this photo. I found the tree again, and the same branches. But I could not find the view of the extended skeletal hand and arm, that almost appears as if it's drawing a bow. It's probably just the particular angle, or perhaps it broke off and fell.

But it reminded me of how myths, legends and fables grow up around places like Lovecraft's "blasted heath" and Tolkien's "withered heath". Or, in contemporary literature, King's Castle Rock, Straub's Millhaven, places where creators, by proxy through their creations, return to battle their demons and dragons.