Lens Is More

Category: Twilight

  • Twentieth century’s twilight, Avalon, N.J.

    C. Thompson
    A little chop around the corner

    We were all on alert this night, 23 years ago, for the prophesied Y2K info-tech meltdown. Computers were said to have been unprepared –- unprogrammed –- for their internal clocks to recognize 2000 as a year. So, it was all supposed to go to shit. It didn’t, at least that night. On Jan. 1, 2000, the worst of it was still mostly Bill Clinton’s dalliance with a White House intern. Then came Bush v. Gore; Sept. 11, 2001; and, well, you know the rest. Happy new year? (1999)

  • Heavy weather, Avalon, N.J.

    C. Thompson
    Paying the bill

    In a week at the beach in September, you get perfect days and you get these kinds of days. (2020)

  • Spring evening, Philadelphia

    C. Thompson
    Not sad. Maybe high.

    (1993)

  • Nauset Beach, Cape Cod, Mass.

    C. Thompson
    IMG_20180311_0002_NEW
    Forever
    When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
    The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
    When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d
    And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
    When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
    Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
    And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,
    Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
    When I have seen such interchange of state,
    Or state itself confounded to decay;
    Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
    That Time will come and take my love away.
    This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
    But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
    — Shakespeare, sonnet 64
    (2003)

  • Winter in Aston, Pa.

    C. Thompson
    Everyone’s pretty much holding tight.

    (2007)

  • In the shadow of Mt. Shasta, California

    C. Thompson
    Good bet that Leo the dog was nearby.

    Taken by my cousin Carter on his telephone. (ca. 2007)

  • Twilight, East Orleans, Mass.

    C. Thompson
    To the right, which is east, waves tell stories of tomorrow’s fishing.

    My mother’s parents built this house on some high ground about a quarter-mile from the beach for their retirement in 1967. In September’s final weeks, there’s a peace that settles over the land, which juts out about 35 miles into the ocean off the mainland. By this time of the evening, my back is sore from spending all day wading with a fly rod in hand, and, if memory serves, there’s a bourbon on ice just below the bottom of this frame. (2007)