" Purple Morning "
- Daniel Owl -
I had spotted the lupines from up there the year before — a field of purple at the foot of Hallgrímskirkja, mostly ignored by the crowds heading to Perlan. I filed it away and waited for the right morning.
July, just after ten. Not warm exactly, but the kind of temperature where you forget about temperature — the morning sun was already doing its job, and I had the whole field to myself. I spent a long time lying on the grass, working through focal lengths and apertures, letting the lupines fill the foreground while the church rose behind them. With the 70-200, I could pull everything close, compress the scene, find something different from the thousand identical shots taken from the square every day. I wasn't in a hurry. Nobody was around. Just the light, the flowers, and the sound of the city waking up somewhere behind me.
When I was done, I didn't leave straight away. I stayed a while longer on the grass, face up to the sun, looking at nothing in particular. Sometimes the best part of a shoot is what happens after the last frame.
On the way down, I stopped once more. A single lupine, alone against the light. I had to.
