The Story Behind / Four Swans
Series • August 16, 2022 • Written by Ashley Vemwell & Zachary Vemwell
While candid, this experience held the captivating underlying theme that all we project is mirrored back to us. In other words, all we experience is a mirror of ourselves: every quality, thought, perspective, everything.
On a winter day, much like any other on the Washington Coast, we found ourselves in one of our frequented viewpoints along a bay near our home.
Surrounded by dense fog, as if to be blanketed in mist, there was not a human sound or sight that could be distinguished, but every so often, a silent creature of the land or water would eerily make itself known through the sheen of gray.
Our cameras perched on tripods, we witnessed with complete presence. Our minds utterly quiet to all thought, we sat huddled together amongst the water’s edge as hours passed by unnoticed, watching, listening, and giving our full awareness to the dreamlike landscape before us.
Without warning, we heard a gentle chatter and flapping of wings come from the sky, and out of the mystical abyss, four swans in perfect succession flew parallel to us across the surface of the water. Graceful and surreal, they glided across the sky like a painting in motion.
Mere seconds later, with a quick yet effortless release of the shutter and a fortunate coincidence of timing, we captured this minimal symmetrical scene of a flock in flight.
A sight so simple and fleeting, yet so profound, we wouldn’t have been able to appreciate its full glory without our meditative perspectives, let alone immortalize it within a photograph.
