Photo Montage and Word Montage

24 February 2012
5:15 PM

Sunrise at	8:19 AM	in direction	111°	East-southeast
Sunset at	5:50 PM	in direction	249°	West-southwest

Duration of day: 9 hours, 31 minutes (6 minutes, 48 seconds longer than yesterday)

I took many photos for previous posts, but only selected those that I thought were the most interesting, but as I go back through them, I see several I like as well.  I began this enterprise to motivate me to write every day.  But to describe what I see solely in words seemed dry, especially when I could add a photo to do the describing for me.   So, unexpectedly, I find am combining two loves - writing and photography.

For example, I had it in my mind that I would take successive photos of the location below at the same time showing the rapidity with which the degree of light and location of the sun changed.  Then life happened and I haven't been back to that spot at that time with clear skies.  Now we are well past sunset because this photos was taken in late January:

The caption read 31 January 2012; 4:52 pm.  February 6, I capture the sunset in the photo below at the same spot and at the same time.  Notice the heart a romantic stamped into the snow at the base of the tree?

There is poetry in the comparison.  The first is much brighter, yet there is no sun visible in the western sky.  In the second, with sun now setting later, the foreground is cast into shadow in comparison.  The first has the softness of mid-winter twilight while the second captures the golden rays of the setting sun. Light and dark, full sun and shadow interplay when the sun shines, but twilight captures the essence as readily.  Amazing is the giving nature of light as it bends around the curve of the earth to share itself.

Very early in January, I drove down to Glennallen and relished views from the foothills where the sun was already shining brightly and blue skies contrasted with the white wonderland below.  I selected this photo to publish:

But the following was just as good, possibly better for overall framing of the Alaska Range behind.

I didn't choose it because I didn't want the road in the image.  I was so struck by the view, and there was no other traffic, that I stopped the car right in the middle of the road and took the shot.  Notice the difference in color - the mitigating influence of the windshield.  Later I learned to carefully frame the photo to exclude roadways if I thought they detracted from the overall image.  I also learned that I needed to be outside the car to capture truer colors.  Yet, the road itself is as much a part of the trip as the surrounding beauty.  From the time I left Delta all the way to Glennallen, I drove ice covered roads traversed by few mid-winter travelers.

I think as I go forward, I need to add more detail in words.  I need to do that to develop the art of descriptive phrases.  Have you ever read Nora Roberts as J.D. Robb for the futuristic series of a NYPD detective?  If you have, have you ever had any question in your mind about the setting of her novels?  I don't.  I see that world vividly.

Ah, the emotions around this task conflict.  On the one hand, I want to be able to have you imagine what I see as effectively as the word pictures that Dana Stabenow creates of Alaska.  On the other, look at this:

And this ..

I love these photos even though they lie.  Yes, my camera does lie.  It tells you it is dark and perhaps gloomy at 10:00 am, the time these photo were taken.  In truth, brilliant light and color played across the landscape.  Our eyes, our souls crave light and so we see the degree of illumination more clearly, more certainly than the camera.

Perhaps that is why words are a necessary addition - to provide what the camera can not see .. my response to what I am carefully documenting.