Title: "Looking east to the Cascades just after sunrise"
(click on image to view larger)
People are drawn to sunrise and sunset for many reasons, perhaps the main reason being the sense of calmness and peacefulness one feels at those times. As an artist, I love the colour palette of the moments before the sun rises, and the few moments afterwards, particularly when the sun is hidden behind the marine cloud on a frosty morning like today. I have been noticing while out on my morning bike ride that the colours are getting quite interesting in the past week or so, and I made a point of taking a camera to capture those intense golds, oranges, blues and aquas this morning.
As a visual record for further contemplation, I am glad I have those images. But beyond their value as a reference for the colours, it's difficult to work those images into something meaningful that avoids the cliché of being one of a thousand million sunrise images we've all experienced both first hand and through the media. One of the other interesting things about images made during a sunrise is the large gradations of tones (or "values" as one refers to them with respect to colours), which is often subtle and lost in the overwhelming saturation of the colours themselves. But converting an image to black and white makes the composition more about tones and shapes, and less about plucking emotional strings with a sunrise image. I think the black and white image invites closer inspection, draws the viewer in.
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