Tag Archives: dawn

Racing Into The Darkness

Posted on by

Pano7273-7284MonVal-Edit

Every day, from time immemorial, the earth has slowly turned on its axis as it hurtles around the sun in its quest to use up its allotted time in this universe. As it completes its rotation, the terminator, that line that divides light from dark, moves across the face of our planet bringing day for some and night for others. This celestial clock can not be adjusted or reset and there is no force that we know of that can halt this race to darkness or stop the illumination of the first light of dawn.

Here at Monument Valley we see the last of this day’s battle as the earth continues its steady rotation into that good night. The colors of the buttes and the surrounding earth they rest on change from the deep dark red of bright sunlight into the muted colors of night. Soon they will appear to be black, just a silhouette seen under the light of the stars. But as it does every single day the night passes and the bright light of day will arrive restoring the colors to the land.

Every second of this unending process is precious and holds its own special magic. You may be partial to mid-day or early morning but this moment, the moment of change, as the colors intensifies then slowly fade to black, is one of the most special times to witness.

Daybreak or the Harsh Light of Morning

Posted on by
HarshLight3360-3675Daybreak Monument valley                       click to enlarge

Unless you’re an early riser many people miss daybreak. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, daybreak is when the sun comes up and everything that was dark is now light. This term is used a lot in the west. Usually by cowboys and long haul truckers and some waitresses. It is also sometimes known  as dawn. Daybreak or dawn is almost always a good thing unless one has a hangover and wants to sleep for another week. But then what are you doing out in the desert with a hangover? What’s a matter with you? Stay home. You’re missing some of the best sights in the whole wide world.

Dawn in the low desert comes with startling swiftness. One moment you’re stumbling around in the dark wondering where your other shoe is and the next it is so light out you can’t blink fast enough. I like that. Talk about Wham Bam, that is some instant gratification. Yeah it’s possible to run around and duck down behind a rock in the shadows until your eyeballs adjust but that’s only available for a minute or two, then the sun gets a little higher and that’s it. It’s day out. Wake up.

Monument valley has a lot of daybreak in the morning. This is just one small example of it. To get the full effect of it you have to be there for a few days and make a good concentrated effort of getting up every morning, then you’ll understand how this thing works. So if you’re not doing anything tomorrow, you already missed it this morning, hop on over to Monument valley just before daybreak and be prepared to be impressed. Oh yeah, and don’t forget your RayBans.

Wakey, Wakey

Posted on by

Wakey1282click to enlarge

Wakey, wakey, doesn’t that just make you want to puke. It is always said by someone who has managed to get up before you and wants to spread the misery. For those poor souls who can not sleep as late as nature intended  and must get up and face the new dawn, you should not have to listen to someone who says wakey, wakey, especially not from those sadists who also include Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey. Consequently I have introduced legislation that will have every single person who says wakey, wakey struck with a hot frying pan filled with eggs and bakey at least twice somewhere about their head and shoulders. Twice, because it usually takes at least that many times before the offender gets the idea that they have offended. The first smack normally feeds into their glee from saying it to you (they know you hate it) and by the second one they realize they’re in deep kimchi. As for the soulless individuals who include the eggs and bakey part, they get their tongues spot welded to the top of their mouth. No three strikes and you’re out crap here. The first time you say it and mean it, out comes the Tig welder.

But it is a fact of life that you do have to get up and unfortunately that usually happens at the exact moment you want to sleep the most. You’re in your favorite position, the pillow is just right, you’re in that spot between deep sleep and wakefulness and the alarm goes off. Or worse yet the devil, the one seen in the paragraph above comes in and says, wait, I’m not even going to say it, but you know what I mean.

Here’s my proposal. Instead of the trauma described previously a soft mellow tone similar to the one heard from a point slightly down the valley from that temple just outside of Kyoto rings once. The one where they ring it early in the morning before the fog has even gently drifted away. The one that echo’s back and forth between the valley walls becoming fainter and fainter. The one whose resonance hangs in the air forever it seems, until it too fades slowly away. It is so beautiful that you want to wake up just to hear it one more time. Then your entire ceiling begins to lighten and the image above, or one like it, begins to appear until your entire room is filled with the magical, glowing light of daybreak. Huh? How about that?  Now you want to get up, if for no other reason than to fire up the welder in case that certain someone hasn’t got the message yet.

Shooting the Dawn

Posted on by

GC1330-1357click to enlarge

You ever notice how morning comes early almost everywhere. You have to get up pretty darn early to beat the morning. I’ve noticed that this is particularly true when I’m trying for dawn in the Grand Canyon. I wake up to what I think is really early, like middle of the night early, and I’m already late for morning. I think you have to go out there right before dark and just stay there all night to be ready to see morning at it’s proper time. This is dawn in the Grand Canyon, I did it, I got up at the crack of dawn, put on every piece of clothes I brought with me because it is cold, cold, cold on the rim of the canyon in December and went out to shoot the morning light.

It was about 5 AM when I got there and you know what, it was dark out, really dark, there wasn’t even the hint of any morning happening. I hung around and hung around and thought something must be terribly wrong because we weren’t having dawn that morning. Not any. I mean who you gonna call when that happens. That’s right, nobody.  As it turns out all my worrying about making it up in time for dawn was just stupid because dawn doesn’t happen until quarter to nine in the morning in December at the Grand Canyon.

This vantage point was Grandview Point and that’s where and when this picture was taken, December 5, 8:45am. Stay in bed, sleep in, have a cup of tea, drive really slow to the rim and then you get dawn. It’s a really civilized way to have morning. It turns out that every other time I had tried for dawn it had been in the summer time when dawn happens shortly after dusk or so it seems. So lesson learned, ask somebody when dawn is around here as soon as you get there and save yourself a lot of stress. This job is supposed to be fun anyway. By the way this is one of those panorama shots where this picture is made up from 27 single images stitched together into one glorious image just for you. So go ahead and click on it to see it in it’s full glory. We go all out for our readers.