Dawn in Blues and Pink

This morning the day has dawned clear and cold, though the bitter wind of last night is fading (for which I am grateful). As the sun is rising, the snow looks bluish and is about the same color as the eastern sky above it.

The low-angled sun of winter creates a light that is much different than the harsher glare of warmer days. I find this especially noticeable during dawn and twilight, when the bluish light seems most mysterious and a bit off-kilter, somehow.

I tend to be drawn toward extremes of things, so the light at the far edges of the sun's yearly route is the light I find the most intresting of the year. Daylight takes a long time to arrive during these winter days, moving through the colors that take night into day much more slowly than in summer. In winter, the night cedes way to day less willingly, or perhaps the day is simply more patient now.

I have to be patient too, and wait for the right moment to try and capture the encroaching dawn. I stamp my feet on this cold morning and wait. In summer, the morning's sky colors arrive and change quickly, and then I must hurry. Grandmother Nature always has a lesson. Sometimes the lesson is patience. Sometimes the lesson is "move quickly!" Today the lesson is patience, and I try to be. And then, I think, the moment is finally here. Or at least the moment I choose is here, and I take the morning photograph.