1/1/2007

Looking for the right way to start off the year, I left the New Year’s Party in northern VA at 2 AM, then drove three and a half hours down to Virginia Beach to watch the sunrise from the beach over the Atlantic Ocean.

Watching the day start, the sun begins to illuminate the clouds, changing the blank dark sky into a layered cake of contrasting dark, ominous clouds. The dull light begins to illuminate individual clouds, providing the foreshadowing of a far brighter source over the horizon. The clouds near the horizon shade us from the bright light, while the dark, heavy clouds at the ceiling begin to show their increasingly colored underbellies. The sun becomes ever more confident, burning the heavy clouds at the ceiling and back-lighting the haze at the horizon, searing the sky bright orange and red. The first pinprick of pure light bounds through, then extends its hole in the sky into a growing ball of orange. Surprisingly quickly, the hole becomes the sky, the orange haze loosing its tint, spreading its light from the horizon to the rest of the sky down past the horizon, enveloping the land.

And I had it all to myself. Just me and my camera, alone to share the new year’s sunrise.

And then I drove home. I’ve never had so much coffee…