I have been accused of being a hopeless romantic.
Yes, I know.
Sometimes I find it painfully obvious.
But nothing.
And I mean nothing.
Fills me with wonder quite like a sunrise.
And I have seen quite a few.
You would think familiarity might diminish the effect.
It hasn’t.
If anything, I have become worse.
More susceptible.
More willing to stand in the cold, in the dark, beside some forgotten stretch of shoreline waiting for the sky to do something it has done every morning since long before there were people around to admire it.
And still…
I watch.
After what must be a record number of mornings spent on the Narrow River, I decided it was time to visit another favorite place of mine.
Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge.
That was the plan.
And I almost made it.
Except for one thing.
The sun was rising behind the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge.
I was climbing the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge when I noticed the clouds.
Photographers understand clouds differently.
Too many, and they smother the light.
Too few, and there is nothing for the light to paint.
But just enough?
Ahhh.
That is when you start hoping.
This morning, the sky appeared to have mixed the ingredients just about right.
As I rounded the bend and caught my first view of the East Passage, something inside me stirred.
You know that feeling.
The one that makes you sit a little straighter.
Look a little longer.
Maybe even whisper to yourself…
Oh, this could be good.
Maybe very good.
Maybe bordering on spectacular.
Sachuest Point would have to wait.
I took the closest exit.
Found a place to park.
Switched to my wide-angle lens.
And made my way toward the shore.
The morning air carried that familiar coastal dampness.
The smell of salt water.
The faint chill that finds the opening at your collar.
The soft sound of water folding against the rocks.
And above it all stood the Newport Bridge.
Waiting.
The first photograph was beautiful.
Click.
Then the light warmed.
The second was better.
Click.
A ribbon of color began spreading beneath the clouds.
Click.
Orange found pink.
Pink surrendered to crimson.
The darker clouds caught fire along their edges.
Click.
And with every photograph I thought…
There it is.
That’s the one.
Except it wasn’t.
Because thirty seconds later the sky changed again.
Click.
Better.
Then again.
Click.
Better.
And I realized that a great sunrise is very much like a rose.
It does not simply become beautiful.
It opens.
Petal by petal.
Color by color.
Think about a rosebud.
Beautiful already.
Perfectly formed.
Holding something inside that you know is coming.
Then one petal loosens.
Another follows.
The color deepens.
The fragrance strengthens.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the flower becomes more of itself.
Until there comes a moment when the rose can open no farther without beginning to become something else.
A sunrise does the same.
And perhaps it is like a fine bottle of wine, too.
You pull the cork.
That little pop.
You pour a glass.
Swirl it.
Bring it close.
The aroma rises.
You taste it.
Wonderful.
But wait.
Give it a little air.
Let it breathe.
Something changes.
Flavors that were hiding begin to emerge.
Something subtle becomes something extraordinary.
The wine has opened.
So had the sky.
And there I stood on the shoreline, watching morning breathe.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Each photograph almost as beautiful as the next.
Almost.
That is the fascinating part.
Because while you are standing there, you don’t know when you have reached the peak.
How could you?
You only know what the sky has already given you.
You have no idea what it has left.
So you keep photographing.
One more.
And another.
The colors deepen.
The reflections strengthen.
The clouds ignite.
The Newport Bridge reaches into the morning, its dark geometry standing against a sky becoming increasingly unwilling to behave like reality.
Surely this is it.
Click.
Then nature adds one more brushstroke.
Click.
The great bank of clouds to my left turns crimson.
Orange burns along the horizon.
Pink and violet spill across the water.
And between those enormous masses of color, an opening of cool blue remains.
Then I notice something.
High above all that fire…
A tiny crescent moon.
Still there.
Night, apparently, had not quite finished saying goodbye.
I love that.
Because for one brief moment, I wasn’t simply photographing a sunrise.
I was standing at the seam between night and day.
The moon still belonged to darkness.
The horizon belonged to morning.
And somehow, for just a little while, they agreed to share the same sky.
Click.
There it is.
Or at least I thought so.
Because here is the maddening thing about photographing a sunrise.
You never actually know when it has reached perfection.
Not while it is happening.
The next photograph might be better.
The next cloud might ignite.
The next reflection might deepen.
The next thirty seconds might turn beautiful into magnificent.
So you wait.
You watch.
You hope.
And you take another photograph.
Click.
Still beautiful.
Another.
Click.
Beautiful.
But…
Wait.
Something is different.
The color has softened.
The fire has begun to retreat.
The clouds are still lovely, but they are no longer becoming more beautiful.
They are becoming less.
And only then do you understand.
That was it.
The photograph before.
The moment you had just witnessed.
The rose had fully opened.
The wine had breathed.
The sunrise had reached its apex.
And you recognized perfection only because it had begun to disappear.
Maybe that is why moments like this touch something so deeply human in us.
Because we know this feeling.
We have lived it.
The smell of your grandmother’s kitchen.
A song playing from the dashboard of your first car.
The perfume of someone you once loved.
The salty warmth of a child’s hair after a day at the beach.
Christmas morning when you were eight years old.
Your first slow dance.
The sound of your mother’s voice.
Your father’s hand on your shoulder.
A dog who once waited at the door for you.
The last summer before everything changed.
Close your eyes and some of them come rushing back.
Not as photographs.
As feelings.
Smells.
Sounds.
Touches.
Little fragments of a life that seemed completely ordinary while we were living it.
That may be the cruel and beautiful truth of memory.
We rarely recognize the most beautiful moments of our lives while they are happening.
At the time, they are simply…
Moments.
Click.
Click.
Click.
It is only later, looking backward, that we discover one of them was the apex.
The rose in full bloom.
The wine perfectly opened.
The sky at precisely the instant when it had nothing more beautiful left to say.
Maybe that is why I photograph these mornings.
Not simply to capture what something looked like.
But to preserve what it felt like.
The chill of morning against my face.
The smell of salt carried on the breeze.
The sound of water touching stone.
A camera pressed against my cheek.
The Newport Bridge reaching across the East Passage.
Crimson clouds burning overhead.
And that impossibly delicate crescent moon hanging quietly above it all.
Proof that the night had not quite left…
and the day had already arrived.
For one fleeting moment, everything had opened.
The rose.
The wine.
The morning.
And maybe…
the hopeless romantic standing on the shore.
I took another photograph.
Of course I did.
Click.
It was beautiful.
Just not this beautiful.
And perhaps that is one of photography’s greatest gifts.
Every once in a while, it allows us to go back…
and find the precise moment
when the rose was fully open.
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