Another October has graced us with its presence, and I, for one, am glad. I look out my window and I see… October. I’d recognize it anywhere.
Here in the Mojave Desert, the days are warm, but not hot. The winds are calm, and —despite carrying something that gives me whiplash-inducing sneezes—the air is clean. At the farmer’s market, peaches have given way to apples and persimmons. The days are shorter, but still long enough. Then there’s the light: the sunrises and sunsets are gorgeous, of course, but even high noon is pretty in the way that only October can deliver.
Last year, at the fall equinox, I started a timelapse film project. My goal was to track the apparent movement of the sun caused by the earth’s axial tilt. The sun “travels” from north to south—something that is obvious when living with an unobstructed view, but not a thing I’d paid much attention to while living in cities.
I left a tripod on tape X’s on the front porch, to keep a fixed perspective. Every morning, I got up in the dark, put a camera on the tripod, and started the hourlong shot—which was usually 1000-1500 still images. This is what the timelapse looks like when processed.
On the day of the autumn equinox—when this one was shot—the sun was off frame to the left. My plan for the film was to see the sun rise whoop whoop whoop from left to right through the frame. Some shots would be longer than others, depending on clouds and color drama. A friend said he’d compose music for it. ‘twas going to be a thing of beauty, I thought.
At the end of October, I got a terrible surprise. One day, loud men in big trucks descended upon my quiet neighborhood to install new power poles and heavy cables. The wires looked like something you’d see near LAX, not stretched across the pristine desert. Suddenly, I had a thick black power line right through my view.
I continued my early morning shoots, thinking of the old adage we TV editors hate: we’ll fix it in post.
The ritual of getting up early and seeing the sunrise every day turned out to be extremely beneficial to my mental health, so I kept shooting until the spring equinox, a total of six months. I filled several 2TB drives with footage along the way!
Fixing the power line in video post production proved beyond my skillset and current computer capability. I pretty much abandoned the film project, with the hopes that one day AI will come to my rescue.
Then, about a month ago, I decided to make the series into a giant print. I figured I could remove the line in still images easily enough (was still a pain in the ass and took way longer than expected).
So here is “Sunrise, Fall to Spring Equinox, 2022-2023.” This project is dedicated to Matthew Parker, who loves this view and doesn’t get to see it often enough.
I also did a “best of” version, with the prettiest sunrises while still maintaining a bit of the axial tilt effect. The images are slightly bigger, so there are fewer of them.
A local Joshua Tree shop is carrying this one, as a 24x36” poster. (I am also selling them directly, so message me if you want one. Or ten!)
It’s a great reminder that there’s still beauty every day—in this crazy world of ours.