Blue Ridge Parkway sunrise

I got up at 3:00 a.m. to get this photo. I headed west out of D.C. for Front Royal Virginia with plenty of time to be where I wanted when the sun rose over the Shenandoah Valley. Ummmm..no.

Life and photography overlap a lot. Things don't don't always go according to plan, and you really don't always get what you want. Can you relate? I was at least an hour short of the location I wanted when it was 10 minutes to sunrise.

Driving in the dark on the twisty Skyline Drive I could see the glow of the imminent sunrise through the trees, desperate for a spot that had an open view to the east I found a wide shoulder where I could park. I grabbed my gear and ran like a crazy man to this gap in the trees and set up. This was a film camera, my Hasselblad, no fancy digital preview window, no meter, it is a box with a lens on the front and film at the back. Using a scientific method I learned in the Navy (the SWAG System, Scientific Wild Ass Guess) I made maybe 10 exposures all the while hoping some car didn't pitch me over the guardrail. 

Such a peaceful image..it happens every day all over the world. You would never know the chaos and the angst that went into making it. Yet there it is. As that philosopher Mr Jagger said; "You get what you need.'