Flight

This was one of the first pictures I took after my dad gave me the Vivitar 220SL camera I have used for the vast majority of my pictures (and all of them taken with a SLR rig.)



It had been raining that day, but by the time I got home it was clearing up and once the sun started to set the clouds took on this incredibly vivid pink. Some of them looked like cotton candy on a fake blue background and others took on this slightly more foreboding coloration. When I got this print back from the developers, I immediately thought of the poem “An Irish Airman Forsees His Death” by William Butler Yeats:

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

I have always loved that poem and some day I think I would like to make a print of this photo that incorporates the poem. Perhaps something like this: