Mazatlan, Mexico.
Sunset photos, secondary only to cat photos in the collective unconsciousness of popular imagery. What is it about sunset photos that appeal to people so much? I remember going to a lecture a while ago by New Zealand landscape photographer Andris Apse. Adris is well know for his striking images of our back country and wilderness areas. In part of the presentation he showed a collection of his images from the last few years, the wilds of Fiordland, Antarctica and the Auckland Islands. The crowd was suitably impressed, murmuring in approval as his images passed by. Then came a sunset shot, no better or worse than the rest, which immediately elicited loud oohs aahs and wows from the audience. A noticeably stronger reaction than to any other image he had shown. There is a conventional wisdom in film making that it's all about the story and, the most important thing in a film is the script and the always popular the visual effects must serve the story. This is a notion that I really don't subscribe to at all. Humans have a need to give meaning to everything around them, to try to understand their world and to make sense of it, to give it a story. But I think we also have a subtle innocence, an ability to be captivated by something as simple as a sunset, to be inspired by simple beauty without any inherent meaning.
