I think this scene is perfectly marvelous. And, I don't know where it is. Or even, for that matter, if it is a "real" scene. What with the ability of artists and technicians to concoct all manner of seeming reality out of 'whole cloth' (as people were wont to say at one time), one could take the pessimistic view and lose the pleasure of seeing a beautiful scene merely because it might not be "real". Real or not, I like it.

Now, for those fascinated (or worried) by the question of whether a "real" experience is better or more to be preferred than an "imaginary" experience (or perhaps more accurately, an "imagined experience") -- which should not be confused with the question of whether the content of a drug induced involunatry hallucination is "real" -- it seems to me that the question of whether "imagination" is as good as "reality" makes a fundamental assumption about the nature of "reality" which just may be false. I think that those people who vehemently insist that there is just ONE reality, and it is the SAME reality for everyone, are the same people who insist that we, human beings, are nothing but a remarkably complex collection of atoms, electrical charges and chemical interactions and that we have no uniquely, and non-corporeal, 'mental' or 'spiritual' component. In other words, there is no "ghost in the machine" (or deus ex machina). The machine simply runs itself. Of course, the assumption --- and it is an assumption --- that one must prove the existence of an un-seeable soul, spirit or other non-corporeal agent, for the simple reason that one can't see it, really ends the inquiry before it starts. If you're interested in this kind of inquiry, you really have to ask yourself from the get-go, why it is that you assume that you've got to be able to see, touch, taste, smell, hit, gouge, run over and otherwise mechanically manipulate in order for "it" to be "real"?

So, to bring this 'round back to where I started ... while writing this post, I realized that part of what makes this photograph/representation so inviting is, for me anyway, that it actually represents a "real" scene which has been 'created' and actually exists in the firmament. I'd still think it is a pretty and impressive bit of art work even if it were made from 'whole cloth'. But, for me, its (presumed) representational nature makes a difference in how thorougly I enjoy viewing this scene.