Like a Painting

Yesterday, I watched a show celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who.  The time travel story included the idea of freezing a moment in time, like a painting.  I, of course, related this to taking a photograph with a camera.

A friend of mine recently commented, jokingly I'm sure, that I had gotten lucky taking a particular shot.  At first, I was a little aggravated by this statement, but after thinking about it, he was right.

Unless we have a time machine and know what the future will look like, we all get lucky when we capture the moment in a photo.  The best photographers in the world get lucky by being in the right place at precisely the right time, but make no mistake, they get lucky.

Photography can be a very technical profession and one can get into f stops and focal length and so forth, but no one can control the future and what is going to happen next.  And maybe that is what makes photography such an adventure, the unknown, becoming frozen in time, like a painting.

Or,we may all just be a bunch of control freaks...

Lone Pine Dawn

The original idea was to get up early in the morning and drive the 40 or so miles up to Rocky Mountain National Park to take pictures of sunrise reflecting off of Longs Peak.  The drive usually takes around an hour to navigate the winding road up the Big Thompson Canyon in the daytime, so I expected it to take a little longer in the blackness before dawn and planned accordingly.

I was on the road around 4:30 am on this mild September day.  As I was nearing the canyon, I pulled up behind a semi truck and was prematurely annoyed.  This would surely impede my progress, but then I noticed how the bright lights of the truck illuminated the canyon road and that the truck was making good time.  The semi was actually helping me get to the park faster.

When I entered the park, I headed to Moraine Park to set up for the sunrise.  As I scouted for good places among the empty campsites, I noticed the lightening sky on the eastern horizon.  I walked toward it and noticed a lone pine tree silhouetted in the darkness.  I quickly set up my tripod and this moment between darkness and the break of dawn was captured.

Not thinking too much of it at the time, I hurried back to see how the sunrise was reflecting off the top portion of Longs Peak.  I took a few shots of the pinkish hue on the mountain and then it turned to a rusty color as the morning light washed over the valley.  The show was over and I headed home.  Later that day, I discovered the above shot on my camera and felt rewarded for my effort.

Sometimes we set out to see something, and something else appears that is every bit as unique as what we had in mind in the first place.  I did get that Longs Peak sunrise photograph I was seeking, but I like this photograph of a lone pine at sunrise better.

Outside the Box
by Andrew Charles

What you see depends on what you are looking at.  We tend to like photographs that remind us of experiences we enjoyed.  If we don't have a reference point, sometimes we can benefit from an explanation of what the photographer was trying to convey.

So, in the spirit of Mark Twain, the stories behind the photographs of Tim Nielsen will be penned by Andrew Charles, the author behind the photographer so to speak.  I hope the stories entertain and add a little bit of color to your everyday life.

As always, enjoy the day.

Andrew Charles