Reflected Color

Early in my career teaching photography, I was fortunate to teach and be taught by a wide age range of students. A couple of times a semester we would load up into college vans and head out to some photo-rich destination. After hours of tromping through the woods or wandering the streets of a city, we would always end up as a group watching and photographing the sunset. Several of my older students had been visual artists and several had been air force pilots. I learned a lot listening to and watching these older students at sunset. When the younger students were snapping at the western sky the older students, especially the former pilots, would watch the eastern sky and when they saw the first hint of color they would begin their timed exposures. They spoke of the light dome and the colors that would travel and change on the dome after the sun had dipped below the horizon. I learned from these seasoned observers that this was when the real show began.