What a photographer knows about the winter solstice

What a photographer knows about the winter solstice

It is at once the longest plunge into darkness and the quiet reawakening, the return to more light each day.

To go internal is to find the glow that keeps us moving forward, quietly reflecting and keeping the embers burning, stoking so as to have it ready to reignite what is most meaningful to us.

A long waiting for the light to break.

A long waiting, reaching for light through the creative abyss. 

This photographer waits.

Waits for the day to break.

Waits for that crack of sunshine to break up the days of gray. 

In the stillness, there is impatience for the days to lengthen. 

For the days to start earlier. To relish the early morning silences as the sun comes up, the aloneness of observation and grounding.

Morning light gives me hope. The quality of that light inspires my path.

It gives me a steady practice: to hold my camera and walk in the mornings, even if I don’t take a single photograph.

And then the snow hits. A day to photograph until it all turns gray. And then I leave my camera on the shelf.

Shelving is also temporary.

Because winter too will end.

Until then what can we do to bring in more light?

What can we do with the light we have to create anew?