I’m starting to develop a new appreciation for cloudy days. The sunrise isn’t much to look at on cloudy days, so I am forced to be more creative with the scene I am photographing. In the absence of a bright palette of colors bursting across the sky, there’s nowhere for me to hide. I can’t just point my camera at nature’s light show and press my shutter button, knowing that the photo will inherently posses a certain level of appeal regardless of how skillfully I construct it. Oh no, not cloudy days. They give you nothing. They don’t forgive. And that’s what I like about them—cloudy days push me harder.

Cloudy days allow me to experiment with shots I might not attempt in the face of a brilliant sunrise. Remember, the colors of a sunrise only last for a few minutes at a time, and they are constantly changing. A beautiful color explosion might last only a minute or two, sometimes even less. A colorful sunrise doesn’t give me much time to think, let alone experiment. But on cloudy days, the scene doesn’t change much from minute to minute, so I can take my time and try a few different things. I am able to see things I might not normally see, and put more thought into what I’m doing.

And perhaps the biggest benefit of my cloudy day experiments is that they give me ideas of what I can do when those mornings come when there is a brilliantly colorful and striking sunrise. Having experimented with certain scenes, and understanding their small nuances, I can confidently recreate them under the pressure of those intense moments when I feel that sense of urgency to capture the sunrise and do it well. When there isn’t much time to think, it’s nice to know I don’t have to.