Do Extraordinary Things
Some great colors could be seen looking north up the Hudson River this morning. I went out to the end of a pier to get the best viewing angle. After a few minutes of shooting, I started to realize that my single images weren’t doing the scene justice, and that it would be better captured with a panoramic. The end result better emphasized the horizon, the skyline, and the waterfront in a way that more accurately describes my experience this morning.
Spent this morning a little further inland at the mossy bank of the Manasquan River. The bright green moss blanketed everything on the shore like spider webs, providing some contrast to the streaks of pink clouds which hovered near the horizon.
This was not a quiet scene…dozens of birds were going wild all around me. Luckily, I had my sound recorder with me. More on that later….new project to be announced soon.
I was fortunate to witness yet another amazing sunrise this morning. Today I went to our little “beach” and found this twisted log which had washed up on the shore some time ago.
One of the biggest challenges for me has been to find different ways to portray the sunrise each morning. After more than 100 days of photographing the sunrise, it has been becoming more difficult to find scenes that don’t look to similar to what I’ve photographed before. This has helped me to become more observant, more present, and hopefully more creative.
We turned the clocks forward overnight, which meant most people got one hour less sleep, but not me. Turning the clocks ahead also meant the sun would rise one hour later than it did yesterday, so I got to sleep in today. It also meant that I would have more time in the morning to walk to further locations if I wanted to.
Being able to sleep a little later this morning was a nice reward for making it this far in my project. Photographing the sunrise each morning has really helped condition me to wake up early and have better habits. Turning the clocks forward by an hour means the sunrise time returns to around where it was at the start of my project on January 1st, so now I can use this time to further solidify my new habits. It’s going to be a couple of months before the sun rises as early as it did yesterday, and by that point, I’ll be even more conditioned for it.
I took advantage of the extra time this morning by walking down to Pier A, which is the furthest I’ve walked for a sunrise photograph so far.
They sky was glowing in blue and gold shining through a dramatic blanket of clouds. Wanting to feature the iconic gazebo in the foreground, I took shots from several locations around the pier, but none were particularly satisfying. Somewhat disappointed, and expecting to return home with a set of mediocre photos, I decided to try one more spot. I backed up all the way to the middle of the pier and moved slightly from side to side until everything lined up. The gazebo, the Empire State Building, the clouds, and the treeline all came together. The sunlight glowing through the clouds were like fingers emanating from the center of the scene, and one of these fingers even somehow lined up perfectly with the tops of the trees. I captured this shot and went home happy.