Friday, April 4, 2008

Fog Passing over the Hump of Spring Hill


PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Uses for dawn:

At dawn after new snow the world is on vacation and the roads and driveways have not yet been unpacked.

At sunrise near the water there are sometimes two suns.

The mists of dawn make air visible.

Sometimes it rises, and sometimes it falls, and sometimes it hovers and sometimes it sweeps.

It pulls the eye down the longest valleys or divides the hills into receding tiers.

There are at sunrise, so I'm told, little cat feet and rosy fingers.

And in spring mighty feathered choirs proclaim the aurora,

And marching turkeys halt and fan their desires.

And listless butterflies still pillowed on moist blossoms are too sleepy to fly from my lens.

Nearby spiders' webs are lit like roadside billboards. It is a test, only a test. Once the sun comes up they're dangerously invisible.

And I've seen on frosty mornings, especially in fall, diamonds tossed across the meadow and thistle and alfafa bejeweled,

Tomorrow the moon rises at 5:55 AM and the sun rises 35 minutes later. Is there a use for that?

Except for autumn frost and winter snow, until the temperature flirts with 40° F. there's little at sunrise to tempt me from bed.