Themes of uncertainty and anxiety have been common threads weaving themselves through my solstice vigil essays over the years I’ve made this project a central element in my solstice observations. The Long Night, that liminal space between the death of the old year and the birth of the new, is a time when I contemplate the year gone by and envision the year to come.
Read More2022 Solstice Vigil - Long Night Closer to Home
I know that tumult and change have been a recurrent theme in my Solstice Vigil essays for quite a number of years now, but as clichéd as it may sound, the Solstice once again finds my life looking rather different than it did when last the sun died and was reborn. As I alluded to in last year’s Solstice Vigil post, my dream job, which was one factor in our move out west, fell apart early in the new year. These days I’m working a forty hour a week job managing a retail shop, which is a far cry from the prestigious and creatively fulfilling job I was doing a year ago, though it does pay far better while being vastly less stressful. What has remained the same though is that my work life, and the move out west, where things are beautiful, but very challenging for me artistically, has left me stuck in a deep rut as a photographer. Keeping Winter Wind Photography online feels far more like an exercise in hope than a logical business choice, but hope is both important and in short supply these days, so online it will stay.
Sunset - Council Crest Park - Portland, OR
Work commitments this year meant that I couldn’t take much time off for the Solstice, working several hours on Solstice before sunset and a full evening shift the following day after a post-vigil nap. That in turn necessitated keeping my picture plans close-ish to home. One of my staff at work, who has lived in this area her whole life, immediately suggested Council Crest Park for my sunset photo.
My experience of the Winter Solstice is generally a solitary one, but Council Crest Park is rather crowded when I get there to shoot the last gasp of the dying year. Although the weather is turning nasty, heralding a bitter cold snap and oncoming storm, there are dozens of people up at the park atop one of the highest points in Portland. From children playing hopscotch, to people taking pictures of the sunset, playing instruments, and even one person with an easel and paints painting the setting sun.
I did consider including some of these folk in my sunset photo, but the truth is that I didn’t particularly feel like talking to people, and these days I don’t tend to feel comfortable including people in my photographs without their consent. I’m in a very social line of work right now, managing a retail shop in what has been the lead up to the gift-giving season, and my social battery gets pretty depleted on the regular.
Given how notoriously gray Oregon weather in the winter is (much like the Maine weather before it), I was delighted to have a lovely sunset to shoot this year. The Pacific Northwest can be painfully beautiful at times, and it bothers me that I’m still struggling to figure out how I want to both experience and capture that beauty in my photography. That said, I’m reasonably content with the photo I got for sunset, and that’s no bad thing.
Deep of the Night
This wasn’t my original idea for a Deep of the Night photo. I had strongly considered heading over to the shop I manage and shooting it lit up by its security lights at night, but I decided that wasn’t the right plan. My whole life I have struggled with investing too much of my identity in my job, whatever it was at that moment. That’s silly on multiple levels, not only because it’s generally not a healthy practice, but also because I’ve long considered my spiritual work to be my “real” job anyway. Nonetheless, being forced to walk away from my job as an automotive journalist was an enormous blow to my ego and my self worth, and I didn’t want to continue that pattern by implying that the thing giving succor in the dark of the Longest Night was the sex toy store where I burn forty hours of each week. That’s just icky, and there are honestly bigger concerns to contend with anyway.
Which brings us to the deep of the night photo I did choose to shoot. In this photo we have my Kimber Ultra Carry II, my We Knife Miscreant 3.0, and a Stop the Bleed kit, which includes a SAM Tourniquet, scissors, hemostatic gauze, and so on. In one photo, there are tools to make holes, and tools to plug them back up. It’s a lovely photo, but a dark subject matter for the Solstice.
Twenty Twenty-Two has been a particularly scary year for LGBTQ people, as the “groomer” rhetoric has exploded across the internet, and made the crossover into the IRL world in the form of bomb threats to hospitals, armed protests at drag shows, and anti-trans legislation in many US states. Then there was the mass shooting at Club Q, which would have been a lot worse than it was if not for the heroic actions of club patrons. But while “only” five of us died, it was still a horrifying attack on one of the few sacred places the queer community has.
I would love to live in a part of the world where gun violence wasn’t a reality of life, but I don’t, and none of those places tend to be open to queer immigrants with disabilities, so it’s unlikely my family will find its way out of the USA anytime soon.
Not everyone can own, use, or carry a weapon. That isn’t everyone’s path or comfort zone, and there are as many good reasons not to carry as there are to do so, arguably more in fact. But virtually everyone can learn to provide good first aid, including CPR and Stop the Bleed training. Humans are remarkably fragile bags-of-mostly-water, so having the training and tools to try and keep ourselves and the people around us alive in a crisis is a vital part of being part of a community and society.
As transphobia and homophobia, along with misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other all-too familiar forms of hate, not only in the USA, but elsewhere in the world, gain greater societal acceptance and in some cases legislative authority, we have to take steps to protect our communities and families. We all have different skill sets and tools with which to do so, but I’m certain it will take people who are willing to fight (in senses both metaphorical and perhaps literal too), those who are better suited to healing, and everything in between.
Sunrise - Cooper Mountain Nature Park
This wasn’t where I was planning to be for sunrise. But the sun rose this year onto a landscape and city holding its breath as a vicious winter storm bore down, not only on us, but on much of the nation. With that in mind, the location I’d chosen for my sunrise photo, Pittock Mansion, had closed for the next several days, which likely included keeping the gate leading to the site closed. Not wanting to chance arriving to find the grounds inaccessible, I instead headed out to Cooper Mountain Nature Park, where I hoped to have a good vantage from which to see the sun rise. For understandable reasons though, many viewpoints in my area that are well suited to see the rising sun, are intended for summer use. The winter sun rises along a very different axis, and I had to hike quite a distance in 6F wind chills to find a vantage where the Photographer’s Ephemeris indicated I should have a view of the rising sun.
It’s a gray morning, as many dawns have been in the seven years I’ve been doing this project. This year, as last though, I find myself a bit confused about the sunrise. See, shooting the sunrise over the ocean is easy. Check the time the sun rises, and if you’re looking out to the horizon, you know the sun has risen when that time has come and gone, even if it's so overcast there’s nothing to see but a bit of lightness to the gray gloom.
It’s a different picture out here. I haven’t gotten the hang of knowing when the sun not only rises, but also when it will become visible over the terrain. As a result, I stayed out for nearly an hour after sunrise, not entirely certain if the sun had risen into the clouds without me catching a glimpse, or if it had somehow not yet made it over the hills, though I strongly suspected the former.
Eventually the bitter cold wind drove me back to the car. Getting in an early morning hike to greet the return of the sun, even if it remained unseen, was no bad way to kick off the waxing year though. Twenty twenty-two was far from the most fulfilling Solstice I’ve had, on a spiritual, personal, or artistic level, but for me it still feels like something of a triumph. I’ve survived to reach another year, and even if I’m not quite where I want to be creatively, this is a tradition that matters to me, and it fed something in my soul to observe it.
Bonus - Mt Hood from Council Crest Park
This photo isn’t of the sunset, and thus doesn’t really fit the narrative of the vigil photo project, but I shot it facing a different direction from the setting sun. It’s nothing special, there are literally thousands of photos of Mt Hood from Council Crest Park, but it’s my favorite photo I’ve shot thus far of my local volcano, and I took it on the same evening as the first photo in this piece, so I wanted to share it.
2018 - A Solstice in Gray
Into the Long Night - Saco Heath
Just over an hour before sunset, with my camera belt strapped to my waist and traction spikes on my boots, I set off into the fog-blanketed gloom of the Saco Heath Preserve. Unseasonably warm rain pattered on the hood of my raincoat, and for once I was all alone as I traveled the slick boardwalk that wends through the woods and fragile marshlands.
The sparse heath and leaden sky seemed to me a fitting send-off for the final daylight of a year suffused with gloom. From a global perspective, the fact that the world didn't end in nuclear fire was perhaps the best thing that could be said for 2018. While political and cultural turmoil swept across the globe, along the way battering or obliterating the pillars of order and freedom that shaped the world my parents and I grew up in, illness and death also hit close to home for my family. Few people I suspect, will be sad to see this past year recede into memory.
Yet even on a wet and miserable winter day, there are glimpses of life and beauty on the Saco Heath. Shrubs and trees that have adapted to its hostile soil persist from year to year, and even in the deepest part of winter still to come, there will be green, living things to be seen there. In that too, the Heath seems a fitting place to see out the waning year, for there were victories and triumphs in my life since the last winter solstice as well.
The fading of the light isn't blatant the way it is on a clear day. Rather than brilliant gold sun being swallowed into blue twilight, the gray filling the sky merely grows imperceptibly deeper with every moment, the steadily climbing Auto-ISO numbers on my camera revealing what my eyes don't fully experience. At 4:08pm the alarm on my phone goes off, telling me that somewhere beyond the gray, the sun is at that moment vanishing below the horizon. I turn towards where the sun would be if I could see it, and shoot this photo, capturing the moment the world around me slipped quietly into the Longest Night.
Sony A7iii w/Sony 16-35mm f4 @21mm
ISO8000 1/20 f6.3
Processed in Capture One and finished in Photoshop
Deep of the Long Night - Personal Fire
Deep into the night, I set off for Portland to shoot what I thought could be quite interesting photos. When my first shooting location didn't pan out, I headed to what I considered my “plan B,” where, after a treacherous hour of negotiating slick rocks in the rain, I fundamentally failed to capture the shot I had envisioned. Frustrated, sore, and soaked to the bone with chill water, I retreated to my car for the return trip home.
So, because sometimes the most powerful light in the darkness is the one we create for ourselves, I decided to build for myself a tiny fire to beat back the night. I was limited in the scope of what I could make, not having yet managed to get the permits required to have even a camp fire. Instead I sawed up some fatwood/rich lighter into small pieces and built a hot, smoky little fire in an antique cast iron cauldron. The following quite enjoyable forty minutes or so of turning my camera to the heart of the fire in the deep of the longest night went a long way to soothing the frustration I felt at the failure of my grander plans for the second photo of my solstice vigil.
Sony A7iii w/Nikkor 55mm f3.5 AI
ISO1250 1/320
Processed in Capture One and finished with Topaz Studio
End of the Long Night - Rural Substation
The dawn of the waxing year came gradually, without a blazing sun rising to banish the night. Instead, the world around me slowly and evenly brightened, as behind thick shrouding clouds the sun began its march across the sky. The sun didn't even create a brighter spot against the flat, even, gray filling the world. Without the Photographer's Ephemaris to tell me where and when the sun was rising, I would have been unable to pinpoint its location or note when exactly the waxing year had begun. After a half hour past sunrise, I reluctantly returned home to finally get some rest.
Sony A7iii w/Minolta MD 35-70 f3.5 Macro
ISO ISO500 1/60
Processed in Capture One and Photoshop
Fuji X-T1 w/Rokinon 21mm f1.4
ISO 200 1/350 f/11
Processed in Capture One 10 & Photoshop
The Dawn of 2017
The sun at last has set on 2016, and I'm glad to see it go. It was a year that saw a seemingly endless cavalcade of personal, cultural, humanitarian, and political horrors. From my mother's cancer battle, to my father-in-law's suicide, to the protracted shit-show of the US election, and so many other individual and collective struggles, the last twelve months have been simply brutal.
Fuji X-T1 w/Olympus OM 85mm f2
ISO 200 1/500 f5.6
Processed in Capture One 10 & Photoshop
And although it is tough to summon up much optimism for the coming year, the dawn of 2017 nevertheless found me watching for the first light of a new year, having returned Camp Ellis, where I shot my Solstice vigil photos. There were other places I might have gone, but after my dispiriting Solstice dawn, I wanted to try again for a joyous sunrise, rather than the miserable one that ended the Long Night.
There are two reasons why I shoot the sunrise of January 1st every year, and they are both so vitally important to me:
The first is that shooting the sunrise is itself a profound act of hope. Against a black sky, it is difficult to know what a sunrise will look like. Even with weather radar and satellite maps, the sunrise is something of a mystery until it happens. When I am packing up my gear and loading everything into the car, I am committing to a course of action based solely on the hope that the sunrise will be worth the effort. And if there is one thing above all else that I have to hold close to my heart going into the new year, it is hope.
Fuji X-T1 w/Rokinon 21mm f1.4
ISO 200 1/450 f/11
Processed in Capture One 10 & Photoshop
The second reason is intimately linked to the first. It may not be possible to live without hope, but it is equally true that it isn't possible to succeed without making the best of the hand that the Fates deal us. I made a commitment both to shoot the sunrise of the new year, and to share that sunrise with all of you. With that as a given, I have no choice but to make sure the results are worth being seen. That puts me under no small amount of pressure, but I need to be able to use that pressure to make myself and my art better.
Fuji X-T1 w/Rokinon 21mm f1.4
ISO 200 1/950 f/5.6
Processed in Capture One 10 & Photoshop
In the divination system of the magical/mystery tradition I belong to, we talk about the Left Hand, in which we hold close the things that we use to shield ourselves from an often harsh world, while in our Right Hand we hold that which we put out into that world. Making an effort to be mindful of what I'm holding close to heart and what I'm putting out into the world is a perspective I find particularly useful to my mental and emotional well-being.
Fuji X-T1 w/Konica AR 135mm f3.2
ISO 200 1/1250 f8
Processed in Capture One 10 & Photoshop
And so as the sun rose on the first dawn of 2017, I held hope in my left hand and hard work in my right.
I suspect that we all will need an abundance of both before the last sun sets on the coming year.
Through the Long Night in Three Photos
Of all the celestial holidays, none resonate as strongly for me as the Long Night of the Winter Solstice. Poised at the cusp between the waning and waxing year, the Long Night is a pause in the flow of time. That moment between birth and a baby's first breath when all things horrifying and glorious feel equally possible, when the world holds its breath, waiting for an answer to the eternal question of “what's next?”
For several years, photographing the sunrise that ends the Long Night has been a tradition of mine. It is my way of acknowledging the return of hope and light in a dark world. This year however, I decided to incorporate my art into the fullness of my Long Night vigil.
Part I – Into the Dark
The sun is already near to kissing the horizon when I arrive at the Camp Ellis pier for the first of my three shoots of the Solstice. The night's cold fingers are already caressing the dock when I get down to the place I've chosen for the first of my photos. Against an almost painfully empty sky, save for a few flaming clouds in the west, the dying sun's warm rays fight a loosing battle with the cool blue of fast encroaching shadows.
Then, so fast one could blink and miss it, the sun is gone from the world; the Long Night has gripped my little corner of the world.
Fuji X-T1 w/Rokinon 21mm f1.4
ISO 200, 1/350s, f11
Processed in Capture One & Photoshop
Part II – Heart of the Night
The midpoint between dusk and dawn sees me back at the pier, but this time I haven't come alone. Despite being unwell, my husband has elected to join me for this part of my photography-vigil. Neither of us wanted the other to be alone in the deep of the Long Night, when tradition holds that we gather with friends and loved ones to shelter against the darkness.
The sight that greets us on arrival is part of the reason why I choose the location I did. Throughout history people have sought to beat back the night, and this night perhaps more than any other. The icy white of the pier's high-output lamps create a welcoming oasis of light, even in the Solstice's darkest hour.
As untold generations have before us, we draw comfort from that light, and from the knowledge that we are together, and not completely alone in the night.
Fuji X-T1 w/Rokinon 21mm f1.4
ISO 250, 1/20s, f2.8
Processed in Capture One & Photoshop w/Topaz B&W
Part III – Daybreak
The sky is already lightening by the third and final time I return to the pier. The pale blue sky speaks of low clouds, though when I arrive there is a cloud break to the north that is beginning to turn pink with the coming dawn.
Ten minutes later, as I am scanning the sky for any sign of the sun, just as my five-minute-until-sunrise alarm goes off, I notice that the promising patch of clear sky has been swallowed by clouds. Almost simultaneously, I become aware of a hissing sound familiar to those of us in the northern latitudes: fine particles of ice and snow skittering against the outer-shell of one's hood.
By 7:11am, my first sunrise of the waxing year, the pier and I have been engulfed in a driving snow squall. I hold out as long as I can, but eventually the freezing wind forces a retreat. The sky beyond my windshield has warmed to a slate gray, heralding the return of the as-yet invisible waxing sun as I pull out of the parking lot.
The Long Night is over, and I end my vigil having hailed the returning sun in absentia. This year of all years, when hope is a scarcity, it is tough not to see it as a troubling omen.
Fuji X-T1 w/Fuji 35mm f2 WR
ISO 1250, 1/60s, f3.2
Processed in Capture One & Photoshop
Note - These photos, as with a ton of my landscape, astrophotography, and sunrise/sunset photos would not be possible without the amazing resource that is The Photographer’s Ephemeris