Soft Dawn

I trudge down the beach, soft sand. It’s dark when I start, and maybe I use a headlamp and flashlight. Details I don’t remember. It’s early fall, so the temperature is just about perfect, little wind. Not much to see, not much catching my eye. I’m here for photography, but I surrender to nature and keep walking, something will come up. And it does … the light, and in particular the colour, and the peace it brings. Oranges and yellows leak up above the horizon, clouds shadow the sky and this whole palette is reflected in a light pastel magenta-blue on the top of the waves breaking softly on the shore. In truth, I’m a little mesmerized, and that’s not like me, but I stare, smile, and enjoy it.

It’s well after true night by now, after astronomical twilight and nautical twilight, it’s civil twilight, and the sun is roaring around the globe, about to erupt above the horizon, fire into a new day and kill all of this light. I can almost hear it. Well, come on then, get out the gear and get the photo; tripod, camera, lens, long exposed to add some silk to the waves. Click … one, two … a few more to get a good looking wave break and curl.
Gotcha!
Have I?
No of course not, all I managed was to collect a few photons on a sensor, a vague representation of what I felt and saw. What I breathed. But it’s the best I can do and all I can offer.