Stories From Behind the Camera: It's All About the Light

I have been blessed by the gift of magical places, the charming streets of Paris, the fjords of Norway, the food of Italy, and the glaciers of Alaska. I have seen the treeless landscape of the Faroe and Orkney Islands, a waterfall in Quebec, the lava of Iceland and the history of London. I have gotten lost on the Autobahn and sung along on a Sound of Music tour on a rainy day in Salzburg.

But of all the places I have been, none compares to the one I have visited every summer - and the occasional winter - of my life, Lake Winnipesaukee in NH. I used to think that this grand lake was all about air and water and sky because that is what you see and feel in abundance, but I have now realized that it is all about the light.

Each morning, the sun awakens me around 5am, early by any account. I could pull closed the shades, but somewhere along the way, someone decided that vertical blinds for casement windows was a good idea. They flap and click annoyingly with the slightest breeze. So, I leave them open, day and night. Eventually, the light becomes too much and the day begins. Even walking the dog, a test of one's patience, brings it own delights, the scent of pine, the leaves shivering on the trees, the shadows on the road.

As the hands on the clock progress, the light, of course, changes. No hour matches the one that came before.

To just sit and watch the sky and the breeze on the water is enough to make you forget home and work and chores and responsibilities. The effect is almost immediate. You take a deep breath and you relax. You are here again.

And then comes the moment, fleeting, but long awaited each day, when the sunset is either bonanza or bust. I can see no sunsets from my home in NJ (too many trees, surprisingly), but open water provides the perfect canvas for the light show each night, if we are lucky enough to get one.

The light is usually lovely, but it is, wonderfully, sometimes magical. These gifts here are not few and far between, but often daily. This view is a blessing I appreciate each and every day even at home in suburbia for once in a while there is a smell to the air or a feel to the breeze or just the right kind of brightness that brings the great expanse of air, water, sky and light of New Hampshire home to New Jersey. It may last only a moment, but a moment is all that I need.

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