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Crepuscular

The fleeting time between light and darkness is often called “the golden  hour” by photographers. The combination of low, slanting light and warm golden hues offers unique opportunities to create compelling, suggestive and often haunting images.  The low light can add drama and mystery, with clouds lit from below, golden auras cast on buildings, and terrestrial light sources given added punch against the darnkening backdrop.

 

This interstitial time of day is metaphorically significant, as well, a time of change, of transformation, the fulcrum between one state of perception and another. Suspended between light and dark, the world is momentarily transformed, the possibilities and mysteries of the new state latent in what is being left behind. A tree, a building, a hill, clouds, a person, each takes on new shape and meaning when cast in shadow, back lit, melded into the foreground or bathed in gold.  Soon, the nuance of shadow will give way to the glare of sunlight; the stark clarity of day will slide into the opacity of night. But for a moment, all is magic, all is possibility.

Copyright 2010-2026 John W Cate   All rights reserved

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