Before the rain

Before the rain. 2021.

This picture sits in the small gap between calm and change, when the sky has not yet decided whether it belongs to the storm or the evening light. The top of the frame is thick with blue cloud, pressing down and swallowing detail, while the lower edge opens into soft pastel orange and pink that feels almost fragile by comparison. The birds lift the whole scene out of pure weather study and into something more temporal, each one a small marker of direction and time. Their loose diagonal flight cuts across the colour boundary, tying the cool weight above to the warm glow below, and turning the sky into a quiet ledger of what is about to arrive.

70 mm • f/4.5 • 1/1600 sec, ISO 200