Yesterday, my friend Jim commented on my blog saying “Opening your daily image is like a box of chocolates, “YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO GET.” That reference to Forrest Gump gave me a chuckle and his comment made my day. It also inspired me to create today’s post. And of course I didn’t mind having to retake the shots a few times to get it just right. After all, I had to use a new piece of candy for each group of shots.
Sunrise can be one of the most spectacular times of day. On our second morning on Caddo Lake last fall, on the Texas side (the lake is half in Texas and half in Louisiana) as our boat skimmed slowly through the water toward the rising sun surrounded by bald cypress, the color intensified to a deeper red than I’d ever seen in the sky before. It already had gorgeous intense reds that we had been photographing for almost 30 minutes but then, instead of fading from red to pink to blue, as I was expecting, the deep reds became deeper, the colors almost surreal. The sky remained intensely red for another ten minutes or so, until the sun finally edged into view and seemed to swallow the surrounding red skies as it rose above the horizon. I have never experienced a sunrise like it.
As the sun was setting over the Weber House, a dilapidated farmhouse relic whose decay is lovingly documented by photographers who visit the Palouse, the clouds reflected the sun with an orangey pink. Most of the shots I took of the Weber House last June were long exposures so the clouds streaked across the sky in a subtle display. The first image shows what I saw above me in the sky. The second image is what the camera saw over a three minute exposure.