The night was cool, the dream would come soon…

June 21st is widely known as the longest day of the year. But for me, the relentless pouring of sunlight would occur a few days before. It all started as I awoke from a vivid dream on a warm Spring day in mid town Manhattan.

I did not even have to question it, I leapt out of bed and instantly knew without looking at a clock or peering out the blinds that sunlight was piercing through the windows of a building that looked not unlike the iconic black obelisk in the film 2001 Space Odyssey. I grabbed my panoramic camera, swept open the blinds and there was the scene my instinct had foretold before my lens.

The day was the long, the light strong…

After a well timed walk down 3rd Avenue with picture taking the whole way, I arrived at a cafe in the East Village to meet fellow Kodachrome shooter Jeff Jacobson. It took us all of perhaps ten minutes to eat, but the visit lasted two hours, time very well spent.
I spent the rest of the day photographing the people and places in New York physically tired, otherwise very attuned and awake. As I walked around before catching my flight, I envisioned what New York City might look like having been taken over by plants, animals and time….it was whimsical to think this way. Right on time, I made my flight thanks to a smart and yet courteous cab driver…he did not even do the incessant “Break and Stop” as most of them do.

The flight was short, but the sunset forever…

My plane departed right at Sunset from
JFK. As we rose out of the haze, the sun dipped down out of sight, until 15 minutes later, it rose again from the same place it had departed. This would go on for hours with Sunset taking over half the flight and dusk lasting until we landed in Denver. I kept photographing the waning light along with lightning storms that were scattered on the horizon.

Our lives are bound by sunlight. The longest day of it for me was not June 22nd but instead June 19th and it was a good day…