Capturing the Lesser-Known Golden Hour

I strolled through the dunes, where I felt the cold embracing me like a memory from home in Ottawa. The world around me lay silenced, frozen in the quiet stillness of a sleeping island. My fingers tingled with cold; photography would be a challenge this morning.

After about half an hour, an orange glow on the horizon was the first indication of the sun's arrival. This is the lesser-known golden hour. With fewer particles in the air, it's not a copy of the sunset but a beautiful moment in its own right. I admired the first rays that warmly hued the desolate dunes.

It was a moment of sheer beauty.

In the opening photo, the skeletal trees before a blue-orange horizon starkly contrasted with the dark, icy landscape, with their reflections blurred on the frozen pond. The sun is any photographer's friend; in this photo, it added a touch of warmth to the otherwise frigid scene.

A bit further on the sandy track I followed, I captured a reflection on a patch of ice, its surface textured and glistening, catching the beauty of early morning light. The north wind had sculpted the ice, leaving a pattern of the frozen waves it once carried. The bright, blue sky above stood clear, missing the winter clouds that typically gray and darken the view in January.

I took the third photo not far from that spot while walking to the west with the warmly colored but still cold sun on my back. The landscape was dominated by two towering figures. In the center, the tip of the classic lighthouse is just visible. To the left, my own silhouette was projected onto the dune by the low morning sun; for once, in this unfair competition, I appeared taller than the lighthouse.

Walking alone in nature at the break of dawn holds a unique magic that I described in my posts this summer when I hiked on the Camino at sunrise. It gives me an intimate connection with this planet's untouched beauty.

This morning was no different; I felt peace in the silence, broken only by the occasional call of birds overhead. As in this summer's Spanish mornings, this was a moment to breathe, to be present in a world that's yet to fully awaken; a world that briefly feels so much more innocent because its beauty fades memories of the images I daily see on my screens as reminders of the intolerance of our selfish breed.

People often ask about lessons learned after twice walking the Camino de Santiago. There are many; one is that sometimes, the best company is the silence of nature itself.

Another early morning memory: Frómista, July 14, 2023, with another tall shadow of me on the left.