I’ve never seen much point to mornings. Nothing good ever happens in the morning. “Each Dawn I Die”, shot at dawn, “Dawn of the Dead”, decision at dawn, “Red sky at morning, sailor take warning,” and the list goes on, it just doesn’t pay to see the dawn. No one ever went on a first date at dawn, thought “Boy I’ll just drop by my local watering hole and see what the gang is up to at six in the AM”, saw a movie, had a great meal or memory at dawn. The only things you do at dawn are chores, go to school, go to work, go to the doctor/dentist, no dawn is just a bad thing to start the day with.
Now in fairness, I’m a night crawler. I’ve always been a nightcrawler, I spent my working life at night, I worked for the hospital on evening shift in college, I worked for LTV on evenings between semesters, I worked for the toll road deep nights after college and I worked for the police deep nights until I retired and drifted into acting where I worked nights and evenings, so maybe I’m not a good judge of mornings.
But if mornings are so hot how come it takes a shot of joe to get started in the morning? Did you ever wonder why Starbucks doesn’t offer a “Happy Hour”? It’s because when you get up in the morning you are not happy and when you get that first cuppa you aren’t even human and in fact don’t you think all of those stories about werewolves and vampires and things that go bump in the night started because of how most people act before that first cup in the morning. Think about it, until Columbus those poor Europeans had to start the day with warm milk. Probably goats milk at that and there is nothing slimier than warm goat’s milk. Why do you think the little Dutch boy stuck his finger in the dyke? He was waving a finger about and gagging and got stuck but that didn’t sound very heroic so they claimed he was plugging a leak. You can’t make a folks tale about gagging on goat’s milk first thing in the morning.
And what about sunsets? You think all of those songs got written because people are so sick of sunsets they wrote a song about them to commemorate being tired and weary of sunsets? No, sunsets come at the end of the day, at nightfall, in the evening just about as far away from dawn as you can get. That’s why people like sunsets.
Do they play baseball, football, basketball or soccer at the crack of dawn? No. You create a professional sports and one of the things highly-paid, spoiled athletes are going to get written into their contracts is the part about not playing first thing in the morning. They play at night like all sensible things. Do forest creatures come out in the broad daylight where they can be shot at and harassed by humans? No they wait until the silly humans have gone to the bars and movies and are sitting in front of their wide-screens and then the little animals come out to play.
So what exactly does all of this have to do with art?
It tells you something about what people might like to see in art. They might like to see folks doing things at night.
Rembrandt did not paint “The Night Watch” because it was the first thing in the morning, Vinnie the Go did not paint “The Café Terrace” at Dawn, nor did Georges de la Tour paint “Magdalen of Night Light” do such great work first thing in the morning, he waited for the deep shadows and dramatic lighting of night.
Now why should all of this matter to an Oregon artists or any artist for that matter? Well, because the days have dwindled down to a precious few and the light has gone off for its winter vacation home in the tropics and we are left with the cool tones of twilight time.
So what to do?
Well, let’s talk about sunsets for instance. You do know that they don’t actually begin at sunset?
No, sunsets start about the middle of the afternoon and go on for four or so hours changing all of the time. The light that you get at six isn’t the same light which you see at four and if you aren’t there working the light all of that time you’ll miss out on some pretty fantastic sights.
And while we’re talking, I want to mention that the sea isn’t the only place where sunsets happen. Sure we are a coastal tribe and we watch the ocean and all of the fantastic things like the waves and the shore birds, the seals and the surfers and the great fishes that sometimes play just off our coast and its hard to rip our eyes way from that view, but the wonderful thing about light and the coast is that it is everywhere. Turn around and look at the rocks and the cliffs as the sun plays along their ragged edges, flashes off the streams and polls left behind in the ocean’s wake, and spatters and speckles the people and things enjoying the last rays of the sun before the soft dark wings of night enfold all and leave us to scurry off to our dinners and television fantasies.
Those same lights which dazzle our eyes when they splash and play in the surf or wash a Cliffside or burnish a rock formation do great and dramatic things to the people who play in the night air.
When the days grow dark and the nights get cold you know its time for football, or maybe you march to a different drummer and like futbol, they still play it ‘round here and you can get close enough to capture the action without violating all of the dozens of rules that the NFL and the FIFA have set up to protect their merchandising rights and their endless marketing.
Try to get close enough to get a good exciting shot of the Ducks or the Beavs and the security men will escort you right out of the stadium. They have exclusive rights to all of the images of the game. Try it with the Seahawks and you’ll get arrested and your camera broken. That professional stuff is for big buck marketers only.
But you can get down and dirty with the local football and futbol teams and they’ll be glad you did. All those moms and dads who get up at dawn to ferry the kids to soccer and football practice are dying for images of their guys doing the sports thing and they seldom get it.
Don’t you want to make them happy; don’t they deserve it for all of those dawn patrol sorties?
But you have to go and shoot the pictures. Plien air painting is hard to do with action sports. Better to have a camera and get those shots for work later when the quite of the studio can be the setting for a thoughtful composed athletic image.
What about all of those cheerleaders who work just as hard but don’t get any of the credit until they get a gig with a pro team and then have a scandalous affair with the pro bikini waxer and wind up on the cover of National Perspirer? Do they have to overcome some terrible personal handicap like the University of Arkansas cheerleader with the prosthetic leg?
Come-on, images are there for the taking and the only thing you have to do is get off of the couch and go get’em.
Fall is in the air and the dark days are coming and what are you going to do about them?
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