Sunsets

[Nick Armstrong]

Some of the most terrible photographs and anecdotes I've ever seen, obviously posted by complete maniacs....

....sorry no P&CA outlet at mo'....pressure building up....

Nurse! The tablets! Quick! The big ones!

[vinteuil]

... no. If you want sunsets - really evil sunsets - you need to go to Arthur Machen. The sunsets at the beginning and end of "The Three Impostors" are typical of this most disturbing work. And just before the first sunset (also the last one in this circular work) - to set the scene :


"The three friends moved away from the door, and began to walk slowly up and down what had been a gravel path, but now lay green and pulpy with damp mosses. It was a fine autumn evening, and a faint sunlight shone on the yellow walls of the old deserted house, and showed the patches of gangrenous decay, the black drift of rain from the broken pipes, the scabrous blots where the bare bricks were exposed, the green weeping of a gaunt laburnum that stood beside the porch, and ragged marks near the ground where the reeking clay was gaining on the worn foundations. It was a queer, rambling old place, the centre perhaps two hundred years old, with dormer windows sloping from the tiled roof, and on each side there were Georgian wings; bow windows had been carried up to the first floor, and two dome-like cupolas that had once been painted a bright green were now grey and neutral. Broken urns lay upon the path, and a heavy mist seemed to rise from the unctuous clay; the neglected shrubberies, grown all tangled and unshapen, smelt dank and evil, and there was an atmosphere all about the deserted mansion that proposed thoughts of an opened grave. The three friends looked dismally at the rough grasses and the nettles that grew thick over lawn and flowerbeds; and at the sad water-pool in the midst of the weeds. There, above green and oily scum instead of lilies, stood a rusting Triton on the rocks, sounding a dirge through a shattered horn; and beyond, beyond the sunk fence and the far meadows, the sun slid down and shone red through the bars of the elm-trees."

As you might guess, this is not a story with a happy ending...

[MrGongGong]

Some of the most terrible photographs and anecdotes I've ever seen, obviously posted by complete maniacs....

....sorry no P&CA outlet at mo'....pressure building up....

[Nick Armstrong]

... no.

[Pabmusic]

Is this the moment to bring up Brahms's 3rd (yet) again?

Or - on reflection - isn't that autumn?

[Serial_Apologist]

... no. If you want sunsets - really evil sunsets - you need to go to Arthur Machen. The sunsets at the beginning and end of "The Three Impostors" are typical of this most disturbing work. And just before the first sunset (also the last one in this circular work) - to set the scene :


"The three friends moved away from the door, and began to walk slowly up and down what had been a gravel path, but now lay green and pulpy with damp mosses. It was a fine autumn evening, and a faint sunlight shone on the yellow walls of the old deserted house, and showed the patches of gangrenous decay, the black drift of rain from the broken pipes, the scabrous blots where the bare bricks were exposed, the green weeping of a gaunt laburnum that stood beside the porch, and ragged marks near the ground where the reeking clay was gaining on the worn foundations. It was a queer, rambling old place, the centre perhaps two hundred years old, with dormer windows sloping from the tiled roof, and on each side there were Georgian wings; bow windows had been carried up to the first floor, and two dome-like cupolas that had once been painted a bright green were now grey and neutral. Broken urns lay upon the path, and a heavy mist seemed to rise from the unctuous clay; the neglected shrubberies, grown all tangled and unshapen, smelt dank and evil, and there was an atmosphere all about the deserted mansion that proposed thoughts of an opened grave. The three friends looked dismally at the rough grasses and the nettles that grew thick over lawn and flowerbeds; and at the sad water-pool in the midst of the weeds. There, above green and oily scum instead of lilies, stood a rusting Triton on the rocks, sounding a dirge through a shattered horn; and beyond, beyond the sunk fence and the far meadows, the sun slid down and shone red through the bars of the elm-trees."

As you might guess, this is not a story with a happy ending...

John Ireland was a mate of Machen's. They used to compare parapsychological experiences.

[vinteuil]

... no.

One of the real disappointments of life in the tropics is the sunsets. Yes, the photographs by Pabmusic in the Philippines and by Caliban in the Society Islands ( the Îles de la Société of French Polynesia) are pretty - but it is an inescapable geographical reality that sunsets near the equator are exceptionally rapid - one blink and they're gorn...

Now the sunsets in Shepherd's Bush, at some 51°30′26″N - well, they're long-lasting - and the industrial atmospheric pollution makes them really glow....

[Stillhomewardbound]

and the industrial atmospheric pollution makes them really glow....

How true. The particles of the pollutants trap the light. Beauty out of despair, I suppose!

Here's a moment from the recent Sain Royal Greenwich festival.

[Nick Armstrong]

Is this the moment to bring up Brahms's 3rd (yet) again?

Or - on reflection - isn't that autumn?

I think so. For personal reasons, it's October - November 1980 (it was one of my 2 cassettes during my first term at University Little acorns.... )

[Anna]

I feel ashamed to post this point and click on a basic camera after everyone else's brilliant shots, but this was the sunset Sunday before last. The Ash tree looks as if it is about to burst into flames.

[mangerton]

No need to feel ashamed, Anna. There are lovely colours in that sky - more than there are in one I'm about to post. Is that not a similar view to a winter photo you posted some months ago?

Anyway... Here is sunset last month in Ravenglass, Cumbria:




In one of Neil Munro's Para Handy short stories, he describes something as "as gorgeous as a Gourock sunset". Here are two examples.

[Nick Armstrong]

I feel ashamed to post this point and click on a basic camera after everyone else's brilliant shots, but this was the sunset Sunday before last. The Ash tree looks as if it is about to burst into flames.

Lovely - that blue-flecked-with-red is always amazing - you are lucky, Anna, you see and snap these things from your home. There's not often a photo-op from my home! (Despite vinrouge's advocacy for the lurid delights of Shepherd's Bush! )

[BBMmk2]

What lovely photos! I hav'nt time at the moment to take any!

[LeMartinPecheur]

Does the much greater rarity of dawn photos simply reflect our evening-slanted days (British Summer Time etc), or are they actually less beautiful?

[Stillhomewardbound]

Well, speaking for myself, dawn tends to be a daily event occurring some way before midday and as a gentleman (or 'lazy arse', as my ex bf would say), it is not a time of the day with which I am familiar.

But seriously folks, the dawn sunrise provides great light, full of shadows, especially good for those city shots when the world still seems to be asleep, but usually it is not cloud filled etc. or as dramatic as its evening counterpart and that may be due to lack of warmth in the air. It's a guess I'm making but it problem is something of that order.