April Awakening: Day Twenty-Six ☀️🌤️🌤️
One of my favorite things about working the morning show is getting the chance to take live bumps of American cities as we go to break. We get a list of about seven or eight live “rems” as we call them, and I ask our tech director to pull it up so our director can use it before we roll the break. Sometimes they’re not so good. Rain may impede the city skyscape, making it hard to see what’s going on. Sometimes it’s just too dark to see anything. But sometimes I’ll get a perfect bump shot showing a beach or a lake or a snow-filled resort. It’s like I get a shot of B-12 when the shot changes over and I get to see the brilliance of each perfect framing, showing all the different parts of this magnificent country. But what sells it for me is the morning sky. Pinks and oranges splashed on the landscape, painting a picture of the magic a morning show can bring.
I love taking photos of the sky. It’s one of my favorite activities. I’m not sure which I like more, sunrise or sunset. There’s something so real about what happens to the sky as the sun comes up, and what colors are left behind as it sets. They’re almost like colors one can’t just recreate with a single shade. You’d have to mix and blend just to get a snapshot of the hue before it gets lighter and changes everything. Then there’s the magic hour, the moment before it gets too dark and there’s enough natural light to let you know night is coming. I love the dimming. The darkening. The blues and purples dipping together to form the perfect shade of evening. I use the contrast on my camera to capture the best shades, just so I can remember the awakening and the bedtime.
The only sky I don’t like is the daytime. I look up and it just feels fake to me. I remember it being a much more vivacious shade of blue as a kid, rather than the child’s playroom shade we have now. What happened to the deep blues? What happened to all the clouds? I’m feeling shafted during the day with nothing to look forward to when I look up. Just a bunch of “trails” and wispy clouds that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out are man-made and manufactured for fun. I feel cheated. I feel robbed of an indicator of good omens during the day when looking up, for the daytime sky has yet to wow me.
I’ve only been frightened by the sky once. I was outside in my little plaza one hot August evening. The thunder had already begun and some light rain started to sprinkle. I had my laptop outside and knew it was getting to be that time to go n. But I was brought to a standstill when I looked up and saw it: A big orange mass surrounded by more pinkish-purple clouds, all ominously staring back at me. I, for a second, felt it was apocalyptic. I took some photos, and I just need to find them first before I post them here. But it certainly looked like the sky was angry. Much like what I put in the header here. It felt like I had done something wrong, and whatever I had upset was staring back at me. I remember saying a prayer to God to make sure whatever was here wouldn’t hurt me.
That was three years ago and I haven’t seen anything like that since. The sky didn’t swallow me whole that day. But even something I love looking at so much still has the potential to do so. There’s no telling what’s actually up there a lot of the time. It’s actually incredible how the one thing we all mutually see can bring so many conflicting emotions along with it. If an apocalyptic hellscape can’t turn me off of loving what’s above me, then nothing can. Until then, I’ll just wait for that day when everything looks just as balanced in the light.