I meant to be up and out and positioned with the camera locked to the tripod and focused on something awesome exactly at sunrise, but I slept through the alarm and woke on my own at dawn. I had to scrap a few shots, but I still managed to spend the morning shooting a variety of places and things. Set up, level and adjust, focus, and expose, until my fingers were so cold it hurt to touch the camera, when I'd return to the car, blast the heat, and drive off to some other location. It's another bright day, beauty blown out beyond measure and visibility at infinity. The mountains are tall and sharp, the snow so thick its contours create vast shadows that convey depth and severity, even from way over here and under intense sunlight.

It was the last day of a long vacation, so I napped in the middle of the day when I felt sleepy, just to indulge in that so rare freedom to let the body rest when it needs to. It was also the last day that I had the Mamiya, and so I loaded one last roll and attempted a self-portrait, doing my best to measure the focal distance and the exposure settings without a person in the frame where I would eventually be. My photographic skills are incipient, and I find that I almost always forget to account for something. Perhaps I missed something in the frame or forgot to reset the exposure compensation to zero at the start of a new shot. I'm improving, but using a new camera only increases the error rate. I'm enjoying the learning, though, and it was thrilling to work with the Mamiya for a few days.

I returned the camera as the light began to turn to shadow and then rushed home to go for a run in the heavy purple of the blue hour. I stretched in darkness in the house with the lights off and then made dinner. All has been quiet. I haven't spoken to another person besides Andrew in six days. I feel rested. I'm sad to let it go so soon.

I found the photo above when I was looking for portraits to use as samples of how the light looks in different places in my apartment. The photo is from 2007, and I took it to see what my make-up would look like in daylight. The bright natural light makes me look much younger than I was at the time, and my hair is no longer that color. You can see the shadow of the camera across my cheeks, where I was holding it in my outstretched arms in front of the window. I like that eyeshadow and the red eyeliner. Might be time to pull it out again.