Ellen Barone

© Ellen Barone.

This seemingly idyllic scene of the River Avon in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, is a powerful example of how deceiving a photograph can be.

Stratford-Upon-Avon was teeming with bus loads of tourists the summer afternoon I created this image. It had been a frustrating day spent dodging pushy tour guides and the trailing flocks of package-tour vacationers that swarmed nearly every inch of the Shakespeare Disneyland a.k.a. Stratford-Upon-Avon. I'd been hustling across a traffic-clogged city bridge to avoid an expired parking meter, when I spotted this scene out of the corner of my eye. A cacophony of chaos swirled about me - the impatient bleat of car horns and the noisy pings of diesel engines - however, when reduced to the silent rectangle of the camera's viewfinder, the image is rendered as anything but.

And here's the truth, today, when I think of Stratford-Upon-Avon, just like the cantankerous uncle who's remembered fondly after death, it's this image that I choose to see in my mind's eye.