Fire in the Sky

"With each sunrise, we start anew."

My days have gotten longer and longer; I stay busy from before the sunrise until long after sunset.

I still snap photo after photo, but haven't had time to share them here.

But this morning I stepped out just as the sun touched the clouds, setting the sky on fire.

I had to share.

 (no editing of this photo at all - this was truly the color that met me. Sigh.)

"You don't need somebody to interpret for you what a beautiful sunrise it is." 

~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

I looked the other direction and saw this ... splashes of sunlight way over there ... again, no editing.

A few minutes later, the fire was out, but look what was left behind - like sheets billowing in the wind.

I felt I could reach up and touch them ... 

I imagined they'd feel soft as silk ...

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope. 

~ Bern Williams

Last week I captured these shots in the morning...

But just a few seconds later, the magic was gone.

Timing is everything.

"Sunrise doesn't last all morning, a cloudburst doesn't last all day.

Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning. It's not always going to be this grey. 

All things must past, all things must pass away." 

~ George Harrison

But look what appeared that evening.

Glorious sunrise.

Glorious sunset.

And then one morning I saw this...

...and on another, this...

As you can see, I spend a lot of time looking up.

But if I have to be up this early, at least I get to see a wonderful show.

What is the good of your stars and trees, 

your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? 

 ~ E.M. Forster

My Adventures with a Lunar Eclipse - Moon Magic

Full moon, wispy clouds, soft darkness, puppies snoring.

No red moonbeams 

No amber glow

But a magical night anyway.

Before the eclipse ... the clouds can't make up their minds...

At the end ... after the full eclipse, when the clouds got bored and began drifting away, allowing me a glimpse of the partial eclipse (but no red moonbeams)...

With a little manual tweak in the coloring...

Yeah, I got carried away.


I prefer the natural color, anyway. Except for these last three, I didn't touch the color. I cropped and lightened, but otherwise they are straight out of the camera.

December Autumn

Cooler temps

a bit of morning frost

but still hanging on to the colors of autumn around here.

Deepwater, in black and white

Walking through my childhood neighborhood always triggers mixed feelings...I'm flooded by memories, but the wear and tear of the years can't be disguised by memories turned rosy, filtered by time...

Where you just see a boarded up, run down house, I see myself telling jokes with my first best friend Ricky in the courtyard (before the faux Spanish re-do) and reading "The Little House" for the very first time in his mom's beauty shop (the center section)...
She gave me the book; I still have it. I treasure it and the memory.
But as much as I'd like to, I can't ignore the boarded windows. The emptiness. The neglect. And it makes me sad.

That's the story of Deepwater, and why I chose to post these photos in black and white; as I walked, I saw the neighborhood through two sets of eyes, past and present...

For me, the next two photos do a good job of depicting Deepwater as it is right now, a neighborhood straddling the past and the present..
...the first, an empty lot where the childhood home of my friend Brad once stood...

...and the second, a brand new picket fence bordering a sidewalk that has felt the weight of children's feet for almost 60 years...

Such a contrast, and the first one breaks my heart. But I feel that together they depict, more than anything, that this is a neighborhood in transition...faded in spots...perhaps even dead in spots,  but overall still clinging to life, refusing to give in to time.

While some houses, like Brad's and Ricky's, are boarded up or torn down, others have been given facelifts and corrective surgery, taking decades off of their appearance; children still ride their bikes, play basketball, walk to school...creating their own Deepwater memories.

For that, I am grateful.