Exhalted is the Occident

“Cold air rises from the ground as the sun goes down.  The eye-burning clarity of the light intensifies. The southern rim of the sky glows to a deeper blue, to pale violet, to purple, then thins to grey.  Slowly the wind falls, and the still air begins to freeze.  The solid eastern ridge is black; it has a bloom on it like the dust on the skin of a grape.  The west flares briefly.  The long, cold amber of the afterglow casts clear black lunar shadows.  There is an animal mystery in the light that sets upon the fields like a frozen muscle that will flex and wake at sunrise.”

J.A. Baker - from 'The Peregrine'




Afterglow light dancing above the southern flanks of Dartmoor National Park - whilst gazing out from the barley-field footpath on the top Blakemore Hill ridge, Totnes. The vast space up on that hillside, the beckoning high moorland to which the eye is led by the track and the high clouds holding resplendent hues, the soft susurrus of the breeze. What joy such moments bring to a wandering photographer.