I was tight on a schedule between two locations in Santa Fe on this mid-January evening. As I drove, I saw a column of orange light rising among clouds from a setting sun. This would not last long. But the view from the road was obscured by foreground buildings and trees.  I knew of a nearby office parking area with an elevated southwest view where I had shot from before, and looped up to the site. With my Samsung phone, the only image machine I had with me, adjusting exposures and shooting, I got six shots in 55 seconds as the column of light disappeared.  A result, the fourth of the six photos, is the image here. 

I’d been looking for sunrises at this location in New York on several earlier occasions. Nothing had worked. Pre-dawn on Oct. 8, I set up a tripod with a very simple camera (a Nikon Coolpix S8200, jpeg only, no manual settings other than lighter/darker and ISO). As first light came clouds showed as I’d hoped, flushed with pinks and purples.  A half hour later, the warming glow of a sunrise-in-waiting evolved, and in the meantime 14 Canada Geese had arrived, and were lazily cruising the waters in front of the camera. I wasn’t always standing at the tripod, but wandering a bit in the area, watching for changes in light that warranted the next shot.  But I was there, finger at the shutter release button, as the sun peaked over the hills with clouds and mist,  and the geese decided to take fight directly toward me.  With the camera set on single shot, I was able to grab only one photo, the one at right, that adequately caught the action. I hope you like it. I do, still, 10 years later. 

  As a photographer going on 60 years or so, I’ve pondered digital imaging and editing, and have always been respectful and limited in tweaking in, or out of, the camera.   I’ve written on this in my photographer’s statements accompanying exhibits, and want to share the thought:

     Given the way digital cameras can “fix” some issues, and the way a computer editing can “fix” more issues, often a photo comes out a little different than the way analog imaging might have delivered the same photo.  I’ve come to conclude that actually, because of the wide latitude of light extremes that the eye/brain can process, the images that digital photograph can produce are more reflective of what we see than “older” photography could render.   I’m reminded of comments from Paul L. Anderson, writing more than a century ago in his book The Fine Art of Photography (1919), who noted that manipulation of exposure, development and printing could make morning appear the evening, and vice versa, but cautioned “…. It is desirable, in photography, not to deviate from the truth more than is necessary.”

     But later, he conceded “departure from facts” could sometimes enhance the message the print is intended to convey.  He told the story of someone who once reproached British Romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner for his artistic exaggeration.

“I never saw a sunset like that.”

“No,” replied the painter. “But don’t you wish you could?”