Happy quarantine days everyone! I don’t know about where you are, but here in East Tennessee the sun has finally come out, and I can feel my own spirits lifting because of it. My hope and prayer is that, wherever you are, you experience the same lifting of spirits, either now or in the very near future!
For the last two weeks I’ve shared sunrise images, both from my beloved Foothills Parkway. This week I want to shift gears a bit, and share a sunset image. I think I’ve mentioned several times on my blog about the “new section” of the Foothills Parkway (I’m not sure when exactly we stop referring to it as the new section… but for now..), and while it is definitely a beautiful stretch of road and I’ve enjoyed photographing there, I’ve yet to get what I feel is a real “keeper” from there. I’m going to keep trying though! One attempt I made at the very end of the fall last year is the image you see above. I was hoping for a dramatic sunset, and unfortunately the sky didn’t work out, but I decided to stick around and enjoy the last moments of light anyway. As the last glow of light was on the horizon, I started clicking away (because that’s what you do when you have a camera in your hands), and I noticed that the camera was “seeing” something that my own eyes were not. The glow on the horizon was highlighting the naked limbs of the trees in a way that I REALLY liked, so I kept shooting until I found a composition that I felt worked. It was enough inspiration to encourage me keep coming back until I get that shot I’m truly after, and today I hope that it’s an encouragement to you as well. Perhaps you can’t get outside today or to the mountains, but you can imagine with me the last warm light of day on your face, and the hope of tomorrow.
Next week I was planning to start another night series, but I think I’ll save that for now and come back to it later. Since none of us can really travel now, I’m going to take us all on another adventure of the mind, starting next week, and then I’ll bring it back home in the coming weeks.
Have a blessed week!
–Dan Thompson