This was a photo I took for a practice project on the WholeWhyWorld.com forums. The theme was “Golden Hour” which is the first or last hour of the day, at which point the direction and quality of natural light is at its absolute best for taking photos. When I produced this, I was asked if it was taken with a camera phone. Haha.

I stood in the woods at my place for nearly an hour, waiting on the sun to rise so I could capture the colors of the sky as it did. I am not someone who has ever been particularly scared of the dark. I find standing in the woods in the pitch black absolutely terrifying though.

I grew up in a heavily populated area, there was always light. Light posts, porch lights, headlights, cops patrolling. Now I live in the middle of nowhere and it gets pitch black out here, and you’re in the woods, and people are not very close. Standing in the dark hearing things in the woods knowing that they’re not human, and I can’t see them.

So when the sun started to rise it felt more like a huge wave of relief washing over me. More like the overexposure, in my head. Burning off all of those unknowns lurking in the unseen. Kind of euphoric. Fifteen seconds of light pouring into the camera, washing out all traces of darkness.

Not that it really matters, it’s just an overexposed picture. For what it’s worth, I took one that I felt was perfectly exposed. Capturing the warmth of the sun just before is rises into view, and the gradient into the sky which 180 degrees away is complete darkness. I took that picture, but it just didn’t mean as much.