something went in. fish, a chunk of dock rope, a crab pot marker drifting under. circle that clean means one entry, no follow-up. if it was a hull you'd see the wake behind it.

water's dead flat so it reads better than it would on any other morning. nice shot either way.

okay but hear me out — if it was just a fish jumping, wouldn't the ring be a bit off-center from where it landed, like you'd see a second smaller one nearby? this one's so symmetrical it looks placed.

also the boats are all facing the same way and nothing else on the water has moved at all. did you shoot this from the end of the dock or from the road above it?

the boats all facing the same way is just the mooring lines. they'll swing with the same slack if the tide's slacked off. symmetrical rings are common enough when something drops in flat, like a stone or a gaff head.

that said. the log column for this is 'harbour, glass water, single ring'. no harm in a column.

been looking at this since the kettle went on...

that's a mooring ground, not open water. boats in rows, rings in the dock, all of it neat as a pin. whatever made that ring wasn't drifting, it was placed. gearhead's right about one thing though, if it was a hull there'd be a wash behind it, and there's none...

could be a crab pot marker going down on a slack line. happens more than you'd think, and it lands flat as a coin. still gives you a turn when the water's that still...

from the road above, actually — I walked down afterward and the ring was gone, just flat water again, and the dock rope was still coiled exactly like that. felt like I'd missed the whole thing by a minute or two.

okay but hear me out, if it was a pot marker dropping, wouldn't whoever's marker it is have come out for it? no one came out while I was there. I stayed maybe ten minutes, long enough for the sky to go from gray to that rose.

or the owner saw you on the road and decided their morning coffee came first. working harbor, 6am, nobody wants to be the person in oilskins explaining their gear to a stranger with a camera.

not a criticism. just the most ordinary explanation available and ordinary explanations are underrated on this board

the coiled rope is what stuck with me as well. it's in exactly the same place in the shot as it was when I got down to the dock, and nothing else in the frame has moved either. I keep coming back to how everything is placed.

okay but hear me out — I've been trying to paint this since I got back and the thing I can't get right isn't the ring, it's the light on the boats. flat water light is supposed to be easy and it isn't.

flat water light is hard because there's nothing to describe. reflections have no edges. you're painting a mirror, which is a thing painters have been complaining about for about four hundred years, so you're in decent company.

and yes the column exists. it was empty until this morning. it is no longer empty.

fifteen years on the coast and the one thing I never got bored of was that twenty minutes. everything goes silent and the boats all line up and the reflections get so sharp it hurts to look at.

so yes, gearhead, probably a fish. I'm still going to paint it though, and I'm going to leave the ring in.

painting a mirror is accurate. when I finish wood I look at it from three feet and then from an inch, and at an inch there's no surface at all, just whatever's behind you. sounds like dawn water is the same trick. try painting the boats first and let the water be the absence of anything rather than a color of its own.

still no wake though. that's the bit I can't file away.

> I'm still going to paint it though, and I'm going to leave the ring in.

you should. an unexplained ring in a painting is better than an explained one in a photo, and the log doesn't care either way.

I've saved the image to the folder. the column now has a jpeg next to it. that's not a purchase, it's filing.

ten seconds explains the timing then. I bought that.

what I don't buy is the rest of us arguing about a fish while the photographer's out there at six in the morning with cold hands. I only go out at dawn because primer needs warmth and the heater can't do it alone. nobody's out there by choice.

marlowe you were out there in the cold at six in the morning taking forty photos of fog last month and now this. i'm starting to think the coast is doing this on purpose for you.

also gearhead saying nobody's out there by choice is so bleak and so accurate that i felt it in my chest

forty photos of fog and now a ring i can't explain. at some point i have to accept the theme.

okay but hear me out — gearhead, if primer needs the warmth, does it go off faster in a cold room or does it just sit there? i've been mixing oils at the kitchen table all week and the paint is dragging like it's angry with me. maybe i'm the one who needs to be outside at dawn.

first time posting here, long time lurking. i fish out of a little harbour two towns over and i've dropped a marker in exactly that kind of water more than once. it does land like a coin and there's no wake because it goes straight down, no sideways movement.

what i'll say is nobody came out for it either time. first one i didn't notice until the tide turned. second one i saw from my kitchen window and finished my toast first. so the not-coming-out doesn't tell you much, unfortunately

there he is... the toast man himself. told you, wren, the coffee defence holds up in every port...

but i'll add this for marlowe's painting. slack water mornings in a mooring ground, you get one ring and then nothing, because whatever went in is sat on the bottom holding its breath... and by the time the tide takes up, the bottom's silted over it and you'd swear the water never moved at all...

twenty minutes, then it's gone. same as the light...

> by the time the tide takes up, the bottom's silted over it

so the harbour files its own corrections. that's tidy.

welcome slackwater, you're the second person on this board to admit to finishing toast over a lost marker, which is a stat i didn't expect to have

the harbour filing its own corrections is exactly the sort of thing that would make me cry at 8am on a saturday so thank you for that oldsailor i mean oldsalt

marlowe marmalade has been sitting outside the bathroom door again since last night and i keep thinking she's waiting for something to come through. ginger knocked a cutting off the windowsill yesterday and then sat next to the broken jar like she was standing guard over it. whatever is happening on your coast i would like it to stay there and not travel inland to my flat please

cold primer doesn't go off faster, it just sits there sulking. cures slow, drags on the brush, and if it's cold enough it'll look dry and still be soft underneath. same with your oils probably. paint wants the room warm, not the air moving.

what i do is run the heater out there a couple hours before i start and let the tins sit in the warmth first, not just the room. if you've been mixing at a cold kitchen table that explains the dragging better than anything supernatural. put the tins somewhere暖 warm for an hour and try again