Everything Everywhere All at Once [explored on 2024/06/22]

There was a magic light on that fateful morning, "the morning that was about to not happen at all". That sunrise seemed to last far longer than usual... It sometimes happens, and, while the origin of such a phenomenon remains mysterious, it is most certainly a blissful gift.

It was ebb tide, and there were some wide, perfectly still tidal pools that were reflecting perfectly that wondrous light and sky, producing a stunning effect. There was something woven into that interplay between the sky and the waters. There was meaning. For some precious, apparently endless minutes, I felt one with the cosmos.

 

Newton's law of universal gravitation was one of the most stunning breakthroughs in the history of mankind. It revealed the origin of Kepler's laws of planetary motion. It allowed astronomers to predict the passage of comets, most famously Halley's. It allowed astronomers to predict the existence of previously unknown planets in our cosmic neighborhood. Yet its single most important contribution to our worldview was the realisation that the whole universe is governed by the same laws. It was a dramatic paradigm shift: we were no longer confined within a special region of the universe, made of imperfect, perishable matter, governed by ad hoc laws in opposition with the perfect, eternal harmony of the spheres—a terrestrial world made of pain, corruption, decay, and death due to our sinful nature. Newton's law eradicated this deeply rooted worldview and showed that everything everywhere obeyed the very same fundamental laws. That we are made of the very same stuff as the whole universe. That the pains of life and the unavoidable decay and death of everything on Earth were not divine punishments but the regular course of Nature. Starting from that point, we found out that even the stars die. Even our universe will die, eventually. Maybe, in some way. This does not wipe our struggling and suffering away, of course, but can help us to see our (small, oh, how small...) place in the whole and, maybe, to find meaning in a meaningless universe. Well, all these thoughts, that have taken so much time to be laid down in words and to be read by you right now, were crowding my mind all at once as I was capturing this exposure bracketing, in the funny way thoughts can overlap and mingle into each other, coexisting all at once. I have shared the result of my photographic endeavour and the thoughts that make it meaningful to me, so I should have accomplished my mission. I hope that you like my work, and I wish you a good life, feeling one with the universe.

 

Explored on 2024/06/22 nr. 59.

 

Laura and I were on one of those little, precious vacations of ours. We were at the seaside, at Milano Marittima (i.e., Milan-on-the-seaside, but the name of the place should not fool you: it is more than 300 km from Milan). We had a wonderful, intimate time - and I went chasing sunrises, earning three sunrise sessions in four days. I am normally careful not to photograph too much and too seriously on such occasions, even when the place is luring me, since my main focus is on us being together. Yet I am somehow lucky to have a thing for sunrises, since this allows me to dedicate some time to photography that does not weigh on our precious together-time - indeed, when I am back, she is usually still asleep. So here I am with a shot from my first session, and the best one (we'll see if I can squeeze something worth your attention from the other two).

 

I have obtained this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks in the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refers to the "normal exposure" shot).

As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning.

Raw files were processed with Darktable.

Done