Hundred and Eighty Degrees of Sky

On this late afternoon I watch clouds form against the blue sky as if from nothing. If the atmosphere cooperates it promises the glorious colors of sundown and the magic of twilight. This is a selection of images taken over the last seven years. Simply stated it's a three-acre field open to the west in a town with few vistas. It was an obvious place to begin a project that had nothing but the work as its purpose. The idea for a book came much later.The majority of the photographs were taken at twilight after the sun had moved below the horizon. There are three measures of twilight: civil nautical and astronomical. During civil twilight there is enough light to photograph your friends. Nautical twilight is darker beginning when the sun is below 6 degrees. It's called nautical because the horizon is still visible at sea aiding navigation. Astronomical twilight occurs when the sun is below 12 degrees and the stars begin to appear. During nautical twilight if the atmosphere is willing it sometimes results in a second burst of color. There is an example of this secondary glow on page nine.I've used photo metadata to annotate the date and time of each photograph. I've also noted the phases of the moon and its age beginning with each new moon. On page fifty-six you'll find the general position-more or less a starting point-where the twilight work begins: the center of my world.Mark Twain passed away at his home Stormfield in Redding. By the early 1900s the surrounding hills situated less than two miles west had largely been cleared for farmland. From the second floor of his house Twain would have had a view of this ridge across the Saugatuck River. He died at twilight at the age of seventy-four.