We Own the Sky(4)

I didn’t sleep at Charlie’s. She stirred as I was leaving, and I could imagine her, one eye open, pretending to be asleep, waiting for the click of the latch. The guesthouse was only a few doors down. It was strange to be sleeping in a hotel when I lived close by, but I wanted to be able to drink without having to worry about driving home.

I clamber up the rocky path, my head pounding, the taste of Red Bull still on my breath. Moving slowly as the incline sharpens, I climb the steep wooden steps up to the ruins, the camera bag heavy on my shoulder. Close to the edge, I can feel the spray of the sea, and I stop to rest and watch the tide coming in, quickly now, ruthlessly sweeping away sand castles and seaweed dumped by an earlier swell.

I climb farther up the hill to the site of the old lookout point. There are no tourists up here, just the wind and the squawk of seagulls. I find a piece of flat ground and place my wooden board down to secure the tripod, to add extra weight so it is not easily dislodged. I fix the lens and then attach the camera, testing to see if the rotation is smooth.

The conditions are perfect. The sea, sand and grass are so vivid, unreal; in the morning light they look like the colors of a child’s rainbow. With my back to the sea, I can see the natural camber of the hills, the slow descent into the valley, down toward the bric-a-brac town. It is an incredibly visceral place. From up here, you could almost reach out and run your hands over the land, feeling the bumps and indentations as if reading braille.

The wind is slowly picking up, warm gusts that blow up white crowns on the waves, and I know I must start soon. I set up the first shots for the panorama, looking northeast toward the headland, and then slowly rotate the tripod disc, stopping at regular intervals to take bursts, until I have gone round the full 360

degrees.

When the camera has stopped its gentle whir, I check the little LCD screen to see that all the images are there and then pack up my equipment and walk back down to the parking lot.

  *

The house is about an hour’s drive down the coast. The village is deserted as I drive through. The corner shop is still closed, shuttered down for the off-season.

I drive past the church and then along the winding road across the dunes, past the National Trust information center, and then up the unpaved track toward the edge of the cliff and the house.

It wasn’t just the cottage’s solitude that attracted me, but it was the way it was exposed, utterly at the mercy of the elements. Perched on an outcrop of rock, across the bay from St. Ives, it is the only building in sight. There is no shelter, no valley to break the ferocious Atlantic wind. When the rain lashes at the windows, when the sea winds refuse to let up, the house shudders, and it feels like it is crumbling into the sea.

As soon as I am in the door, I pour a large glass of vodka. Then I go to my office upstairs, sit at my desk and stare through the dormer window that looks out across the bay. I log in to my profiles on OKCupid and Heavenly Sinful to see if I have any messages. There is one, from “Samantha,” a woman I was messaging a few weeks ago.

Hiya, you disappeared. Still interested in meeting?

I look at her pictures, skipping through the tedium of patent shoes and

discarded umbrellas and plane wings and hearts on cappuccinos, and there is one of her on holiday somewhere, and I am reminded that she is pretty, a slight, mousy brunette.

I thought it was you who disappeared! And yeah would love to meet...

I connect the camera and start downloading the Tintagel images. When the

download is finished, I flick through the photos, happy to see they are well-aligned and won’t need much retouching. I load them into the rendering program I have written, and the software starts stitching the images together, the pixels fusing like healing skin.

You can never predict the light. Some days, when I am out with the camera, you think it is just right, but then the shots all end up looking grainy or overexposed. Today, however, it is perfect. The sea shimmers, the grass on the cliffs is as green and tight as snooker cushions. In the distance, I can see the faint outline of the moon.

When the program finishes processing the panorama, and when the images are joined together like a miniature Bayeux Tapestry, I encase the final image in a layer of code, so that people can zoom in and out and spin around. When all that is finished, I upload the image to my website, We Own the Sky.

I am surprised that the website has been popular. It started as a hobby,

something to break up my afternoons. But the link was quickly shared on

amateur photography forums. People wrote to ask me about my technique, the equipment that I used. The website was mentioned in a Guardian piece on panoramic photography. “Simplistic and beautiful,” the writer wrote and I felt a rare swell of pride.

People ask me sometimes, in the comments, in the emails they send: “What

does  We Own the Sky mean?”

“Is it a reference to something?” And the truth is, I don’t know what to tell them. Because ever since I left London, those words have been bouncing around in my head, and I have no idea why.

When I am out for a walk on the dunes, or sitting at my desk looking out to sea, I whisper those words to myself—“we own the sky, we own the sky.” I wake to the sound of them, and before I fall asleep I can hear those four words, as if they were a mantra or a prayer that was drummed into me as a child.

The image has now finished uploading and I look out of the window, drinking my vodka, waiting for the ping. It takes a little longer than normal. Ten minutes instead of the usual five. And then there it is. A comment—always the first comment—by the same user every time.