Release the Hounds 

Last night I went walking along a parkway in the neighborhood. It's next to a river, and very peaceful walk. It was kind of cold, and there was a low fog hanging everywhere in the grass and the trees. Every breath I expelled resulted in a thick haze that lazily dispersed as I walked. It was dark, and in some places the street lamps are pretty distant. It left me with an eerie feeling... like something out of "The Hounds of the Baskerville". At one point there is a foot bridge that crosses the river to go down a separate path. It is an old stone bridge, with massive cables holding up the walkway. It is short and stocky... massively over-built for such a short span. Yet it's these exact features which give it so much character. Hanging directly over the walkway is a yellow sodium vapor lamp, which when combined with the fog, thicker of the river, just looked amazing. I walked to the middle of the bridge and listened to the running river... knowing that soon it will be still and frozen. What a perfect picture.

I went home, got my digital camera, and came back with it. I must have taken 10 different shots. I tried different white balance settings, different flashes, different exposure rates... anything I could think of in my amateur photographer's mind to capture it perfectly as I saw it. When I got home, I downloaded them to my laptop hoping that at least one might have turned out well. There must have been one that I could post here and share with the rest of you. Not one was even close to what I saw. It's amazing for someone like me, who works so closely with so much technology. With all we've built, all we've designed, all we've imagined, some things are still only appreciated when seen with the human eye, and marveled at by the human brain in person. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes words are all we have.