Sunset from a mall parking lot

The descent into Calamity Corners
London, ON
November 2021
This photo originally shared on Instagram

The scene: Sunday at 5:11 p.m. in a shopping mall parking lot, where I'm waiting for our youngest son to finish work. It's right around sunset, so I scan the sky for anything of interest.

I'm challenged on a number of fronts:

1. It's an active, busy parking lot filled with #ldnont drivers who, on a good day, treat pedestrians, cyclists, and anything else not encased in two tons of mechanized armor as nearly invisible inconveniences.
2. I have no clear shot to the horizon, as the mall itself blocks most of my westward sightlines, while the road itself rises to the west.
3. Whatever little sky I have to work with is filled with what you see here: enough power infrastructure to run a city.

But in photography as in life, you can't choose your playground, and you have no choice but to make do with what you've been given.

So I make do. I'm rather certain the folks waiting for the bus think I'm cataloging a crime scene. One driver gives me a thumbs-up and a smile for reasons that aren't clear to me - but I guess are better than the alternative.

The photo I ultimately capture - long-lens perspective through the wires, almost straight down the twisting, rising spine of Fanshawe Park Road West - is hardly a conventional sunset scene. But conventional isn't necessarily my jam, anyway, so this will have to suffice for now.

Soon enough, no-longer-little-man texts me that he's done, so I pack up my little psychotic photographic road show and head back to the car, another in-between moment now complete amid a life seemingly full of them.

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