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.