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It didn't take me long to use the term "stalking the sunrise." The phrase was born when I discovered the sun is not a stationary object.

Those of you with scientific minds are going to tell me that the sun IS stationary, that it's the earth that circles it relentlessly, giving the sun the appearance of a cross-sky traveler. But I don't want to be bothered with science. I'd rather savor the mystery of it. I didn't set out to stalk the sunrise. I started out looking for a time each day to take a fast walk for exercise, and since my days are full, that time had to be early in the morning, before anyone else is up.

Except the sun. It would eventually join me, sometimes as I arrived at the waterfront trail, sometimes as I crested Lighthouse Point, sometimes as I moved out onto the breakwater, isolating myself from shore, trailed by a stream of crows, looking for the peanuts I carry.

Then, last April, I bought a digital camera--feeling very daring and slightly guilty for abandoning my old Minolta X750 film camera. I'd always said I wouldn't get into digital, but there I was, with a little Canon PowerShot SD 800. (Little in size. Mighty in capability.) Now I could easily take a camera with me on my walks. The Minolta was heavy, and its 8-battery external motor drive made it even heavier. It just wasn't fun. So I walked without, and had no proof of the deer who calmly stood within 10 or 15 feet of me, or the rabbits who waited stone still in the path in the hopes I wouldn't see them--or the sunrises, orgies of color performed against the sky, with no voyeurs except the critters. And me.

That changed with the Canon. It was so light I hardly knew it was there. It quickly became the best kind of companion--unobtrusive but always available. Now I could capture those glorious sunrises that are never the same two days in a row.

However, I quickly realized what any deer hunter or fisherman knows: sunrise is a very movable feast. It has to be stalked, like any wild creature that follows its own mysterious rhythms. I learned I have to be out there at least half an hour before it actually crests the horizon--because that's often when the best colors are--but that means checking every evening for its scheduled appearance the next day.

In April, when I first began the chase, the sun came earlier and earlier, by one or two minutes every day. I back up my get-up time accordingly. By mid-June, I had to forgo it altogether, or get up so early to meet it, I'd have to go to bed at 8 o'clock the night before in order to get enough sleep.

That was a sad time for me, because the magic and mystery of sunrise lasts only about 15 minutes. When the days were at their longest, the sky had sobered up and put on its daytime face by the time I came on the scene. I had to find other things to shoot.

Then the pendulum began swinging back in the other direction, with the sun once again rising later as the days slowly got shorter and shorter. For summer revelers, it's a subtle change hardly noticed. For me, it put sunrise back within my grasp.

The sun changes its entry point as well as its arrival time. In the summer, when I stand along Burlington Bay, it hides for a time behind the trees on Fisherman's Point. As summer progresses, it moves slowly south, until the day comes when I can watch it peek above the horizon of Lake Superior.

There's nothing in creation that moves as quickly as a rising sun. One moment it's but a promise on the horizon; look away long enough to adjust a camera setting, look back, and there it is, a golden sliver scrambling its way up the slippery slope of sky. Something primal within me leaps in recognition of an entity that deserves respect because its power far surpasses mine. I snap quickly, aiming, metering, focusing, knowing I have but moments to change foreground, to position the horizon, to get it right. It's best when clouds are present, to disperse the intensity of light, to prevent the dawn's silent joyful shout from overwhelming the capabilities of my camera.

I have it set on vivid color, the white balance on cloudy which increases the warmth of tone. I aim right at the sun itself, to intensify the color. I'll worry about the resulting silhouetted foreground later, in Photo Shop, where I can lighten it a bit to bring out details. It's the sun and the surrounding sky I'm most concerned about.

Early man once paid homage to this show by pagan worship of a power they didn't understand. I know it's only a creature like me, caught up in its own rules of life, like me. Despite that knowledge, when I see the great orb returning once again, scattering before it colors yet to be defined, I somehow feel as if I've looked into the eye of God.

And so I stalk the sun, a hunt that ends with a capture but never a kill, a chase that renews itself with each new day. It's come to where I can almost hear the sun say, as it tosses me those first few golden rays, "Oh, it's you again."

BY Monica Isley - lablover47  

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