Morning Thanks

Garrison Keillor once said we'd all be better off if we all started the day by giving thanks for just one thing. I'll try.

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

Posting for shots

A slight haze made this both a gracious dawn and kept it from being as gracious as it  might have been. Twenty years ago, July 2005, I went west out of town to a hill I knew got close to overlooking Canton, SD, a wonderful big hill where I worked hard at trying to reach my initial goal in shooting pictures early, outside of town--I wanted to catch the sheer beauty of open land and radiant sky.

The one up there didn't quite make it, even though I was blessed to be out there to witness. I haven't gone out shooting in a long time now, but what I wanted to do was "post" for the morning sun, be at the right spot at the right time, as if I were a deer hunter who simply knew exactly where to look, where to be when the moment came. This dawn is what I saw.  

And, a few minutes later, these friends.


See those farms way out there beyond the blue--they'll clue you in to what I was after. But I wasn't about to catch the motherload that morning because what was out there just wasn't enough, that morning, to take the day.

So I had to look elsewhere. I had to compose, not just record.

That's not a helicopter readying for attack on the big cottonwood on the horizon (see him/her coming in high and from the right?) It's some kind of bird, I'm sure.

I took these pictures 20 years ago. When I look at them today, I realize I was learning something about seeing--what to look for.

This is what I came for, too see the morning sun on the valley of the Big Sioux. It'll  take your breath away if you're just standing there and looking, but no camera I know of will get this landscape in through the lens. 


Then again, sometimes grace simply walks out of the corn like Shoeless Joe and makes you forget everything. 

 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ... dragonfly?

J. C. Schaap said...

Obviously, I don't remember, but I'd bet on how out of focus it is--thus, a bird.

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