Sunset Frames
I seem to have always chased the light, not the kind that floods a room with fluorescence, but the fleeting kind, the one that paints the world in fire and whispers promises before slipping away. My camera, actually just a cell phone these days, strapped to my hand with a safety cord, so I don't drop it in the water or something equally dreadful. "It's not about the shot," I would tell anyone who asked, though no one ever did. "It's about being there when the sky cracks open, or goes to sleep."
That evening, by the reed-fringed edge of Mirror Lake, he felt it again. The sun, a bloated tangerine low on the horizon, dipped toward the water as if testing its own reflection. I stood there waiting for the right moment, the chill seeping through my jeans, and framed the scene: dark silhouettes of cottonwoods clawing at the amber sky, their branches like ink strokes on a canvas of molten gold. The reeds in the foreground swayed, fuzzy and forgiving, catching the last glints off the glassy surface. I took several shots and the sun moved and the colours changed, hoping that one of the shots would be what I hoped for.
