Photo of the Day (10-21-09)

There are some photographs that are the stuff from which novels are made–or if not a novel, a mighty fine short story–possibly written by Annie Proulx or Alice Monro. This stunning shot taken in Maine by justin fain is one of them. There’s a moody quality to the lighting and the colors that immediately drew me into the scene. Although the shot is absent of people, except for the lone boat in the distance, their presence is felt.

The question is, would the story be a romance or a horror story? Would anyone be killed? Is the person who lives here waiting for someone who is lost at sea? Is there a happy ending? Oh, I hope so.

If you have a shot that’s captured your imagination, send it our way at Gadling’s Flickr Photo Pool to capture ours. It might be chosen as a Photo of the Day.

*I think the lighthouse in the photo is the Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, near Portland.

Heath Ledger died today and I’m thinking of Brokeback Mountain and Wyoming

Wow! I am truly in shock. I was writing up another post and swung over to The New York Times on line when I saw Heath Ledger was found dead today. How awful and how odd. I just saw him this weekend in the movie “I’m Not There” and earlier today, before I heard he had died, I thought, you know, when I think of Heath Ledger, he’s Ennis Del Mar working on a ranch in Wyoming. What is he doing playing an incarnation of Bob Dylan? Yes, yes, I know it’s acting, but there are some roles and some landscape vistas that go together so well that they play over and over in ones head as if there is a movie camera in there.

The summer after I saw “Brokeback Mountain” we drove through Wyoming on our way from Colorado to Montana and back through Wyoming again. I thought of Ennis and wondered how he was doing without Jack. Again, yes, yes, I know Ennis is a fictitious character created by Annie Proulx, but still, her short story and the movie captured a certain quality of Wyoming so perfectly. (Yes, I know that it was shot in Canada, but it looked like Wyoming.)

As I recently posted, John Ur is writing about movies that capture a sense of place. “Brokeback Mountain” is one that certainly does that. And without Heath Ledger, “Brokeback Mountain” wouldn’t have been the same kind of movie that made people look at Wyoming in a new, different way.