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This one has a story to go with the picture. It was taken early on New Year's morning of 1998, when I was hiking in Arizona. I climbed Flat Iron the day before (in 1997!) and met New Year on top. The climb was an experience in itself. It would have been simple, but for my knee I injured the day before when I took a fall the wrong way (it later turned out that the bone popped out of the joint -- but I had no idea at the time). So it took me twice the time it should have, and I was sucking the air throught the teeth in pain now and then while wondering all the way whether the knee would hold until I get down.

The evening came. It felt strange to sit on the edge of the cliff and look at the fireworks in Mesa some seven hundred meters below. From that height you can not see them go up, just dots flashing for a moment and dying. Somehow I did not want to be down with everyone else, drinking and partying and having fun. Being sad is not wrong. And when the darkness falls, with it stars come. Many stars, bright and dim, covering the sky as a silver dust, the way that inly can be seen in the mountains.

In the morning I got up before dawn, and scrambled in the dark up to the very top of the rock fingers rising above plato I spent the night on, to get an eastward view. Soon the sun rose.

Afterwards, I gathered my things, and started hopping down the long way to the base camp, thinking that altogether this was New Year's worthy of remembering.

-- Andrei Frolov (andrei@phys.ualberta.ca), December 13, 1998

Answers

I can almost hear how quiet in was that morning. The shot really captures the dawn light right before the sun pops up. No better way to spend New Years.

-- Micheal F. Kelly (Kellys@Alaska.net), December 14, 1998.

absolutely gorgeous. if you had been able to get just a half stop more exposure on the foreground, would the sky have burnt out? if not, i suggest you would have had one of the most impressive images i have seen in this forum.

-- wayne harrison (wayno@netmcr.com), December 14, 1998.

A good image, but I think using a ND grad filter would have helped with the foreground exposure. It's too dark IMHO.

-- Rich Ruh (pathfinder@poboxes.com), December 15, 1998.

Just a quick technical note - this was taken with two-stop ND grad. Exposure of foreground is fine, even though the scan can look somewhat dark on some machines (it has gamma 2.2).

And to critique myself - the photo is somewhat soft (it was taken at long end of EF28-105 zoom, BTW). Maybe bigger tripod would have helped. Or maybe I just missed the focus ever so slightly in the dim light...

-- Andrei Frolov (andrei@phys.ualberta.ca), December 15, 1998.

Very, very nice shot! Nice color pallette. The foreground goes with background together very well. The exposure is dead on to my taste. I'm sure it is gorgeous projected! Thanks for sharing it with us. Gene.

-- Gene Fichtenholz (gfichten@wco.com), December 16, 1998.

Andrei, I had intended to comment on this photograph long before this. I think you've done a beautiful job of capturing the feeling of early morning. The light is subtle and "quiet" with just enough detail in the foreground and in the multiple ridge tops reaching back toward the sunrise. Very nice!

-- Barbara Kelly (kellys@alaska.net), January 06, 1999.