Springing

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Springing

For the first time in a long time, I stood and waited for the sun to rise enough to bring good light to a subject. I walked around and looked at the blooms, seeing angles and tried to find the shot I saw in my head. I stopped and breathed. I lost myself in that moment.

* * *

I’ve missed shooting like that. The technical qualities of the image are secondary to slowing down, breathing slowly and waiting for a moment that may or may not come. You can’t force the sun to hit a subject just right. You can bend yourself literally or figuratively to capture whatever the sun is or is not hitting.

That’s what this shot is about: it’s a record of a few minutes, early-ish in the morning where I didn’t think of my list of things to get done, the email, calls to make, appointments, the news, social media or anything else. Just seeing if the sun was going to hit this tree in a way that would spark something.

It’s not the photo. It’s the moments just before. I had forgotten how therapeutic those moments can be.