The story of Saturday's dawn

The clouds at the horizon look formidable, and while the break at the horizon is sure to light things up, whatever gets painted across the broad sky won't stay long. All that cloudiness will descend and put out the fire, shut out the startling color of a sweet November morning. 

I was driving east--and south get up close to this break when "first light's" unmistakable beauty was painting the dawn. Here's what I think: an awesome dawn sky is only rarely anything more than setting in a story, a rich and gorgeous backdrop most certainly. But, like a story, remarkable images of dawn require a character. We're still fifteen minutes from sunrise, but finally, right along the road, I come up on trees--nothing remarkable, but something anyway to people this composition I'm trying to create in my camera.

The colors are stunning, but the saplings front and center are, at best perfunctory. Still, what's here will without question stop the eye. Sunrise is still coming, and I'm not doing bad, or so I tell myself. I get back in the car and start hunting--somewhat frantically--for new characters.

This, I know, isn't going to last long. The sun is still beneath the horizon, but this strange pillar of brightness suddenly appears. Before me is nothing but black horizon, but I tell myself that the setting is the story right now because this little anomaly--the little pillar that makes my camera wince--is all I need. It's rare and its raging. The cloud's edges up above get burnished, and far above, there's a bit of azure sky. I'm not thrilled by the wind turbines waaaaay out there beneath the sun, but they're everywhere these days. You can't miss 'em, and these are at least a couple miles east. (I doubt you'd have seen them if I hadn't pointed them out.)

I stop the car where there's another character, another tree along the road, this one more an oddity with its huge sweeping breadth. 

You can't miss the fact that the setting isn't just "setting" here either. The sky is variegated, cloud shapes and colors seem playfully layered into a composition of at least five distinct sections--the black horizon, this massive cottonwood, a flat orange field complete with a sun pillar; then, there's a few brush strokes running south above the pillar, and finally all that gray frowning above. There's story here all right, but I tell myself, I can do better. Still, I'm conscious of the fact that this moment is going to be gone and irretrievable when I turn my back, so I get up closer to character, thinking maybe there's a shot here too. 

And then, like an idiot, thinking there are greener pastures, I get back in the car, dawn's artistry behind me, and drive north into the hills along the Little Sioux River, thinking I just might get lucky. 

Strangely enough, I come to a place I've been before, where a single burr oak sits out on slope. I must have a half dozen versions of this very image, each of them in a unique dawn. No matter. I know very well that this is the shot that'll outdo the others.

First, from some distance--

The kaleidoscope sky is pretty much gone now, and although the sun still isn't up, it's burn spreads across the horizon as if there's a fire lurking somewhere not that far away. And there is. But here I stand, trusting the camera to get at least something of what I'm seeing in the heavens, which it never will; still, sometimes what it delivers can still deliver real blessing. This shot is a whole story. In a scrapbook or on a calendar or on a wall, this one will stop your eyes in their tracks, begging you to imagine your own.

But while I'm here and while the sun is just now beginning to open to the world around me, I tell myself that this character is nothing to sneeze at all by her lonesome. I put on another lens, pull that burr oak up closer, making fewer colors far more prominent.

Less setting. More character. But that slope somehow pleases the eye, and all those gnarled branches carry along their own story. She's modeled for me before--here she is just last December. It was a no color dawn, so I had to grab setting where I could, the hoarfrost grasses up front. 

But I was talking about Saturday. Right about then the sun rose, and it was just a matter of minutes before the clouds shut like a curtain, and the world went still and monotone. Photography is all about light, and when you don't have it, you know it's gone. 

I went home. 

I have risen early today. Far in the distance, a faint glow paints the horizon. Dawn is coming, gently and full of prayer. This is the quiet time, the time of innocence, the childhood of the day. ~Kent Nerburn, "The Gift of the Dawn," Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life, 1998.