The Light Begins To Fade

Morning on the Willamette

Now that we have tipped toward the coming of Winter, the days are shorter, the light less intense, and the colors are often richer, or at least I am more likely to be out and about during the hours around dawn and dusk.  The camera, though, is really useless for trying to catch the quality of the light and color I see, and I continue to try to hone my ability to remember long enough to get home and get it down on canvas or board.  This isn't one of my natural strengths, as it turns out, but I do believe it is possible to get better with practice.  And in the end it becomes a matter of relying more on imagination and making it up, rather than trying to recreate what is before one's eyes.  I still argue you can't do a good job of making it up or trying to recreate the emotional experience if you can't also match what you see in front of you.  The skills required to mix a color or match a temperature are hard-won.  But without them, how can one practice Intention?