Sunday, October 4, 2015

Idea #15: Capture as many sunrises as possible

Description
A few years ago I was sitting in an airport bar, eating dinner with a tall beer, when a man next to me began chatting about something on the TV news. Whatever it was is not important, because 90% of what passes through the mouths of CNN news anchors is generally forgotten within a few hours. What I remember is when he pulled out his phone to show me this cool new Flipboard app he'd begun using. The images up on his phone when he unlocked it was a sunrise.

One of the more spectacular ones.
"Oh," he said. "That's a sunrise I saw this morning." He began flipping through the photos. Each one was another sunrise, a menagerie of oranges and yellows and reds rising up from a curtain of dark blue. He must have had dozens of photos of sunrises, with a few of his wife, daughter, and dog mixed in. "I get up and walk the dog every morning," he explained.

From the Alexandria waterfront, when I actually managed to jog.
That idea stuck with me. A moment of singular beauty each morning, captured with the devices in our pockets. At the time, I never rose early enough to bother. Now I have a dog, and she and I walk the streets each morning. I don't always snap a photo, but I often think of this man in the airport, who hit on such a simple practice to capture a moment of peace and beauty before we fill up our days with worries and chaos.

Steps
1) Wake up before the sun rises.
2) Find a reason to go outside, or even just look out the window in the morning.
3) Pull out your phone and snap a photo every
time you look up and think, "wow."

Enthusiasm: I used to post the photos to my various feeds every week. But then my girlfriend told me I needed to cool it on the sunrise pics.
Practicality: Easy enough if I can wake up.
Difficulty: I'm not a morning person, so it's not natural for me to be up and aware before dawn.

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