I’m obsessed with sunrises right now.
It’s a bit cliché, I know. Next I’ll be telling you that I like walks on the beach and old, black-and-white movies (guilty on both counts, I’m afraid). But I can’t decide why I’m so fascinated: are the sunrises here different than anywhere else, or do I notice the sunrises here differently?
On one hand, the sun hits the world at a different angle up here. It comes in so far south that at its zenith the best comparison I can make is late afternoon on a bright, midwinter day in Ohio. It takes so long to rise, inching gradually over the horizon. Almost every day I look out the window and think, ‘That gradation of color can only be captured in painting.’
On the other hand, I’ve never watched the sun rise so consistently before, never had the opportunity to study its subtle variations. I’ve always been a night owl, meaning that sunrise was the beautiful experience I got a few times a year when I was dragged out of bed too early.
So you can see—this is something of a chicken-and-egg situation.
Even though I know I can’t capture it, I love taking photographs of the sunrise. I’ve started keeping my camera on my desk just in case. Occasionally Betsy will poke her head into the production department and let me know that there’s something worth seeing, and I’ll walk casually to one of the three windows upstairs without a screen (an important thing to know when photographing).
I sometimes worry that I’ll finish my volunteer year with nothing on my camera but hundreds of sunrises, barely different in their nuances and color. In theory, I’d like to photograph people, capture meaningful moments. But more often than not, I simply live those moments and then let them slide away. I photograph the event that happens every day.
But I love watching the colors filter from blue to purple to pink to orange over the white mountains or the white sea each morning. It amazes me each time that all those colors actually appear in nature. I’m already nostalgic for it when I think about the long summer days that will come eventually.
