Vigil
Vigil is for the person who's tempted to give up on the cusp of something changing.
I made this before dawn at the base of one of Victoria's high country ranges, near Mount Buller, on a weekend away, in heavy frost biting through the air. The valley was too dark to shoot from where we were staying, tall gums blocking any real view of the sky, so I sent a drone up instead. The first look through the screen was flat and unpromising, exactly the kind of morning that makes packing up and going back to a warm bed feel like the obvious choice, and my fingers were already losing feeling inside my gloves. I stayed anyway, and within minutes the sky forgot it was meant to be blue, turning gold and deep violet above a single winding road, the only way in or out of that part of the range.
What I hadn't expected was how much of the photograph depended on the waiting itself, not the shot. I'd already spent that time studying the landscape while nothing much was happening, so when the colour finally came, I already knew exactly where to anchor it. On that one road, the only visible thread through an otherwise densely forested valley.
Vigil is for the moments when you're ready to give up right before something changes. Let it hang somewhere you see when you're tempted to quit early, and it will keep making the same case that cold, uncertain morning made to me: stay a little longer than seems reasonable, because the reward rarely arrives on the schedule you'd choose for it.
