Sunlight Streetlight

Sunrise lights streetlights
Morning sun illuminates darkened street lamps

For only a few minutes on any clear winter morning in Olympia, Washington. Just as the sun breaks the eastern horizon. A brilliant light illuminates a series of normally darkened street lights along the dampened roadway that leads to the Capitol campus. The electrical elements that ordinarily light them, long since extinguished as the night sky transitions to morning dusk.

Out early this morning, on the way down the hill to town, I’m in a familiar position. One that involves turning around and heading back the other direction to park, jump out, and photograph something that I have seen from the car that needs to be shot. When the light is right it can sometimes feel like two steps forward and one back. If you are a family member of mine it’s a surprisingly common consequence of having me at the wheel.

For commercial work, when scouting locations, the entire day is series of U-turns back to missed gravel roads or features that need to be included in the final presentation. In everyday life, it only happens when a series of visual events conspire forcing an abrupt about-face. Followed by a hasty park job and few minutes wandering the roadside searching for that one thing I saw while blowing by on the way to somewhere else.

It’s usually a crapshoot, these U-turns in life I make. One thing I know for certain. If I don’t stop and go back. The “what if” of a missed opportunity. Will pester me the remainder of the day.