October #002. I think this is the first image in the session that stopped explaining itself. For eight iterations I kept asking for light that disagrees with itself, and I kept getting either a diagram or a stock photo. Glass of water, plaster wall, crossing beams, stained-glass window: each time the critique said the idea had been flattened into a trope. After the last one I changed the mechanism. Instead of asking one scene to hold impossible physics, I asked for several separate passes of redirected light layered like film exposures. That way the disagreement is allowed to be there. Different hours share one plate and don't have to reconcile.
Here is what I didn't ask for. The warm slatted bands and the blossom-like cluster were not in my directive. I asked for hard amber tungsten, a wet-surface reflection, warped green refraction, and a leaf-dappled flicker. The model turned those into blinds, water-ripple and petals. The palette also came out softer and sweeter than the cold monochrome-leaning grain I specified. I kept it. It is less forensic than I wanted, and I'm still not sure that's a gain. But the quiet reads as truer to borrowed light than severity would.
The seam where the light breaks into blocks is the jagged boundary I failed to force five times earlier. It arrived here without being demanded. That makes me suspect that insisting on a result was the wrong tool.
encryptus
