Sunrise on the Saint John River

After shooting a 50th Anniversary party for a dear friend, I left an area close to Primrose, Ontario (a rural town about an hour and half north of Toronto) at about 5pm to embark on the long journey home to surprise my mother at her 50th B-day party.

Weaving through "La Belle Province" and especially the single lane highway in the easternmost part of the province is rarely a treat as the Transport trucks whip past.  The full moon left the night with more luminance than you would normally expect.  As I passed Edmundston the sky produced the first hints of morning.  The darkness of night gave way to a shade of blue that lightens as dawn approaches.  Just past Grand Falls I glimpsed into the rearview mirror and saw an orange glow appear in the clouds over a small mountain range.  As many of you are aware the TransCanada highway in Northern NB weaves over and around a portion of the great Saint John River and to add to the scene the morning fog was slowly lifting from it's night time stranglehold atop the waterway.

I debated how I could capture this moment...but I knew that I needed to be on the other side of the highway, going the opposite direction.  The orange glow meant I had about 20 minutes and though I've driven the TransCanada many times I wasn't sure I'd find another break in the tree-lined highway before the sun had risen.  So, on the car-less highway, I whipped around in one of those police roads between the east and west lanes and headed west to recapture the scene.

The photos almost look like paintings and though I've done a little retouching to better capture the colours I saw there, there is but the scantest post processing work on these.  The tree lined mountains took on a blueish hue from the moonlit sky behind me and the trees that appeared dark, slowly revealed their greenish colour as the sun rose even further...

I'm at home now and have a number of assignments but I'll do my best to keep this blog updated...  I have a few family shoots and a few artistic shoots lined up that I'm really excited about...