The geometry that produced this sky doesn't happen often. A heavy cloud deck overhead, a narrow gap at the horizon, the sun dropping into that gap and lighting the bottom of the clouds from underneath. The clouds above stayed cold blue because they weren't getting any of the warm light. The clouds at the gap caught the full sunset color and reflected it down onto the wet sand. The water held both temperatures — warm at the horizon, cold in the foreground.
People who view this photograph regularly tell me they see a ghost in the upper clouds. I have looked at the frame on a calibrated monitor more times than I can count, and I still see what they see. There is a shape in the cloud structure — not a face exactly, not a figure exactly, but something the human pattern-recognition system reaches for and grabs.
I don't think the ghost is in the photograph. I think the ghost is in the looking.
