It occurs to me as I sit down to write up my 2019 Long Night journey, that I haven’t written anything substantive in over ten months, not since I wrote my mom’s eulogy. For that matter, I also have done little scenic or landscape photography in that same time. The idea of taking those kinds of photos without being able to share them with mom has simply been too painful.
In a year that has, for many reasons, including losing my mother, felt like a year-long slog through an unending Long Night, I set out into my Solstice vigil low on sleep and high on anxiety, but determined to honor the turning of the year.
Sunset
Over a year since moving away from Old Orchard Beach, it’s on that familiar stretch of sand that I find myself saying goodbye to the waning sun. The popular resort town becomes a shadow of its summer-self by this time of year. The amusement park looms skeletal over the pier area, where all but a few businesses are shuttered. In the winter, it’s occasionally possible to stand on the beach and not see another soul.
I have the beach to myself on this grey, chill, solstice eve. Just when I had resigned myself to relying on my watch to tell me when the sun officially set though, a brief break in the clouds graces me with a last glimpse of light before the Long Night sets its teeth into the world.
Sony A7iii w/Tamron 17-28mm f2.8 @21mm
ISO 2500 1/125 f7.1
Processed in Capture One
Deep of the Night
In a similar vein to my 2018 deep of the night photo, my 2019 clever conceptual photo plan proves untenable. This year I go through with executing the photos, at no small inconvenience and discomfort, but the results are dismal.
However, I find myself oddly relieved. The idea that failed was a revisit of a successful mid vigil shot from a few years ago, with only minor variation. Moreover, it took (kept?) my solstice journey in an emotionally dark place. As much as it makes sense, it’s not the energy I want to carry into the waxing year.
Looking for something more joyous and whimsical, I bundle up and trudge down the road. In the bitter cold and inky darkness, with a silly grin on my face, I spend some time getting a photo that my husband has been asking for for weeks. Our neighbors about a half mile away have decked one of their dump trucks in lights, with Santa in the cab behind the iced over windows. It’s just so ridiculous and fun, a perfect bit of levity in the depths of the Long Night.
Sony A7iii w/Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 @75mm
ISO 160 3.2 seconds f8
Processed in Capture One
Sunrise
For the dawn of the waxing year, I find myself at a spot I’ve considered each year for sunrise at the end of my solstice vigil, but never actually visited. I’m relieved at how easy it is to get to, and the view down the Saco River is beautiful as the approaching sun begins setting the scattered clouds ablaze. My spot is perfectly positioned for the rising sun, something that is more difficult to find on the Maine coast than one might imagine.
I’m in position a solid half hour before the sun is scheduled to break the horizon, and shoot dozens of photos as the dawn paints the sky in blues, purples, and finally, yellows as the day begins to break. After each shot, I tuck my hands quickly into my pockets, thawing them with the rechargeable electric hand-warmer I have stashed there.
When the sun is well and truly hung in the sky, and the most visually exciting elements of sunrise have passed, I turn to head back. A local, in his tennis-ball yellow Jeep (a color GM calls “Shock”) has stopped behind me to watch the sunrise, and generously offers me a ride back to the lot where I’ve parked. For the first time in three years, solstice dawn has brought color and a view of the sun, rather than simply a brightening of a cloud-shrouded sky. That, plus the kindness of a passing stranger, has me feeling lighter and easier than when I set out into the Long Night just over fifteen hours earlier.
Sony A7iii w/Tamron 17-28mm 2.8 @20mm
ISO 100 1/160 f8
Processed in Capture One