Lady of the Lake

In 1965, British folk singer Donovan released his second album, Fairytale, which included the cult song Jersey Thursday. The song contains the refrain "in a tiny piece of coloured glass my love was born, and reds and golds and yellows were the colours in the dawn”, which was circling around my head when stood on the boardwalk on the western shore of Lake Bled one morning in October 2022. This location provides the perfect vista of tear-shaped Bled Island (Blejski Otok) and its magnificent baroque church, called Cerkev Marijinega Vnebovzetja by the locals, but also known as Our Lady of the Lake. Bled is situated in the Julian Alps of the Upper Carniolan region of northwestern Slovenia and is a truly fairytale place, especially on those misty autumn mornings where the water is still and the light sings. The trick here is to capture that scintilla temporis when the dawn colours are in bloom but before the church lights are switched off.