Tree Ghost

I've mentioned  before my attraction to translucent or reflective surfaces that, in the right lighting conditions, will yield a kind of indirect image that is a kind of metaphor for the photographic process itself.  Naturally, I have a repertoire of such surfaces that I revisit, to explore seasonal changes in the intensity, angle and direction of light, not to mention wear and tear on the surfaces themselves.

A lot of the recent building on campus (and there has been a lot of it) has been highly suitable.  The architects all seem to have decided that a nautical, slightly Mediterranean look is appropriate (Southampton, home of cruise liners, geddit?), so there are rather more white exterior walls than anyone familiar with the British climate might think appropriate.  Unsurprisingly, the architectural "artist's impressions" never show the water stains and algal growth that become a major feature, several years on.  But, obviously, this suits my purposes rather well.

To those of us who have -- for whatever mad reasons -- set ourselves the task of finding fresh ways of looking at the same old things, autumn poses one of the greatest challenges.  It's just so good to look at, it's impossible to see.  This oak tree, for example, is beginning to blaze with colour.  But you've seen all that before.  Here it is reduced to a fog of spectral layers receding into one of those white walls.  The green tint in the shadows belongs to the eggshell "white" surface, not to the tree.