Anticyclonic Gloom

Anyone who thinks photography is not, in the end, all about the light has probably never experienced the sort of glum "anticyclonic gloom" that has been squatting over southern England for what feels like months. A static high pressure system has created a thick grey layer of cloud and trapped all the atmospheric crap beneath it while at the same time sealing off the sunshine, rendering everything joylessly flat, like a vast neutral density filter, or the visual equivalent of an anechoic chamber. [1] Once upon a time, before the Clean Air Act of 1956, these would have been perfect smog conditions in any city worth the name, and Southampton's air is still not the cleanest or clearest at the best of times.

The shortening days have not helped, either. I had to drive over to an auction house near Salisbury recently – I'm finally disposing of some "edged weapons" that have been hidden from children in the back of a cupboard for decades – and was amazed at the reduction in visibility by mid-afternoon. Beyond about the width of one field on either side of the road everything faded into indistinct grey silhouettes: even the imposing remains of Old Sarum were practically invisible. Admittedly, there was some sort of photographic opportunity there, but this kind of weather seeps into your soul – I know, I should probably get myself re-souled – and I simply couldn't be arsed to stop the car. There are precious few safe stopping places out there in rural Wiltshire on a misty day and, besides, I didn't want to attract the attention of any passing police, in case they might wonder why I had a Japanese sword and a bayonet in the boot.

But you can't keep a good obsessive down, and I've been tinkering with this idea of an "angels" project, as foreshadowed in the post Every Angel Is Terrifying. As it's not been worth going out to hunt for fresh angelic manifestations I've been scouring the archive, selecting and converting suitable candidates into monochrome versions so as to impose a certain uniformity of style. I don't think the weather has influenced this "creative decision", but I suppose it might have. I will also concede that I may have got a little carried away with the monochrome filters. Whether this array of slightly antique looks will survive into the project's final form I'm not sure, but I'm enjoying it at the moment, and it feels appropriate.

BTW, talking of grey skies, has anybody out there signed up for Bluesky? I'm curious about it and might be just a little tempted, but I was never on Twitter so have no story to tell here, other than the sanctimonious "why are you wasting your life on social media?" one, which you will have heard many times before (and yet still you tweet!). Doubtless, though, if I were to join then the thing would immediately go out of fashion / be ruthlessly monetised / be bought by some billionaire twit and renamed Z or something. I should probably be public-spirited and stay well away.

1. A subject about which I happen to know something. See the post Thoughts From an Anechoic Chamber (a good read that one, I think).