[overthemoon]

"Melancholic" is the right word. Like negative romance. It has a peculiar ugliness that makes me want to stare at it, to get lost in the detail, and the contrast against the relative uniformity of the water is really compelling as a photograph. There's also an element of awe at its engineering, at least for me. Growing up, my dad worked at a nuclear plant, and it inspired a similar sense of awe. It's an aesthetic that's been used in a lot of science fiction.

Contrast against this famous photo: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/why-the-i... which I find disgusting, though similarly detailed. Maybe it's just the whole "familiarity breeds contempt" thing.