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Someone more analytical than I am said to me this morning, “You have been taking sunrise pictures for six years, three months, and three days.” That I have. I recently watched a TED Talk by Benjamin Zander called “The Transformative Power of Classical Music.” His talk uses classical music to discuss powerful communication strategies. He uses little snippets of how children learn to play the piano. They start at 7, very deliberate, trying to remember the keys. At 8, they are learning more about how to play the pieces. At 9, and 10, they start to not think about the piece as they begin to put themselves into the notes and allow the music to begin to flow. That’s how he uses classical music to compare with people and how they get better at communication and speaking in front of people. I related it to my 30 years as a fundraising consultant. How, after 30 years, the way is so ingrained in me that the classical method of fundraising is something I just know how to do. You have a situation; I have a solution. Then I began photography.

In 2020, when I started being more serious about photography, COVID hit, and we were going to begin isolation and lockdown. I remember thinking about how I could go to Lake Superior, be isolated from people, take photographs, and spread some gratitude. I remember going down to the lake with Bella, my Maltese who passed in 2021, and just feeling grateful that every day I could be outside, and because the lake is so big wouldn’t encounter people, and if I did, we were able to social distance.

I was in the middle of a photography class at Northern Michigan University, and on March 18, 2020, all classes were canceled for the foreseeable future. Eventually, they were taught online, but my professor was older and very tentative about online teaching. I had learned the basics in class and was able to transfer that learning to photographs.

What I realized in the first couple of years:

• Michigan has three seasons: Winter, Spring/Summer, and Fall.
• The “big” lake heals the heart, the soul, and the mind of the people it encounters.
• Universal connections between pictures I took were often connected to my international friends taking almost duplicate photos from thousands of miles away.
• Living through the worst winter storms was nothing compared to Covid.
• And after Bella died, I waited three weeks and found Shadow.

2026 - Six Years later, I have learned:

• Consistency changed me.
• Sunrise photos have given me a new way of seeing the world.
• COVID gave me a beautiful social network and connections around the world.
• Sunrise photography has given me a new way of being and a rhythm all its own.

That was one reason I enjoyed Zander’s TED Talk. When he went through a few notes by the different age groups, I could see that it was how it started with me and photography. I’d go to the lake and ask the universe to “show me the perfect picture.” Today, I go to the lake and still look for that perfect picture, or the right setting, but now I just ‘take the picture’.