For a few evenings now I'd been thinking I ought to have been doing this. I ought to have at least been experimenting with being here at a time during which things would undoubtedly look different. I wanted to pay proper attention to the soft duskiness of the light, the seductive reddening of the sky, the strange mixture of serenity and melancholia pervasively cast forth in the glow of the dying embers of the day. It was time, I decided, to witness a sunset.

And there it was. The sun was setting.

Perhaps if I'd been less anxious to make sense of what it was I was experiencing, I might have got more out of it. Then I might have actually had an experience. Because I don't think I did, really. All I recall now is that I felt slightly pressurised, and was having to do things rather more hastily than usual. The sun seemed to be setting incredibly quickly - way too quickly - and I was having put all my efforts into making sure that I didn't miss anything before it was over.

So I frantically looked around from one thing to another, desperately trying to pictorialise everything; trying to seek out what might look good in an image, making images, making more images, possibly making too many images, fighting with the faltering auto-focus of my equipment (which was fighting its own battle with the deteriorating light). And while all this was going on, I was urgently trying to formulate some coherent thoughts about what it was that was happening, and what it was I was seeing.

But pretty soon it was too late; everything had already happened by the time I'd got close to being ready to witness what it was that was happening.

As things finally began to slow down, and the freneticism of the setting of the sun was replaced by the more leisurely advent of darkness, I wondered how I could respond to what I had just witnessed. I decided in the end to disturb the stillness of a tree by shaking it.