Awaiting the Harvest The Great Plains stretch out to the horizon and just keep going from there.  Sunrise and sunset really emphasize the vastness of the area as the sky changes colors from horizon to stars.  The line separating ground from heavens serves to horizontally frame any subject rising above it.

I drove around one afternoon looking for a sunset composition that gave a sense of this bigness but in a context appropriate for this part of the country.  I saw the cloudless sky starting to give this range of colors from warm to cool at about the same time I spotted these grain bins.  It was the type of image I was thinking about.

So here's the scene.  A field that has been harvested, shown by the furrows empty of crops.  Grain bins that ought to be full but are empty - why?  The leafless tree, leading role of a windbreak line stretching behind it to protect the fields, just as man-made as the bins and plowed field.  The huge bowl of sky that everything is silhouetted against with two contrails sketching across it, emblematic of people who consider this the fly-over territory.  It's a cooling, autumn evening anticipating the time when all I see will be snow covered, crisp with the understanding of its role between summer and winter.

I got all my equipment set up and then waited for the light, wanting the last rays to just cut across the top of the ground.  As I paused for those minutes urging the sun to position itself to my designs, it was a moment of Zen as all the elements in the image came together in my mind to deliver an understanding of both the vastness I could see and the connection I was making.