The Many Shades of Light
Light changes everything. Color appears muted in low light, bleached in bright light, or nonexistent in the dark. Light brings out the blue or yellow or red undertones in a color and shadows form around the base of an object depending on the direction light is facing.
Imagine Tucson where the sun sears a stark white light that changes depth perception and sends desert creatures (including humans) scrambling for the nearest shade. The light heats pavements to a molten mess and entertains those who experiment with cooking eggs or cookies on their sun baked cars. At night, there are white Christmas lights hanging in garden trees, regardless of the season, and light of fires in friendly backyard fire-pits glancing off smiling faces. The stars blink in every direction.
Soft glows the sun in Missouri touching tips of grasses growing in the prairies or igniting the humid air with a golden haze. Summer nights sparkle with fireworks and lightening bugs, streetlights, porch lights, and car lights. Cigar embers scatter and dim as a man taps the end against a doorway before heading inside a low lit bar. Desperate to fight off the seasonal blues, city dwellers trudge through snow to soak in the weak rays of the winter sun.
There is nothing like the evening light. The setting sun drifts to its bed each night with a finale to rival any show. In the south or north, midwest or east coast, west coast, or south west, the light of day displays purples, golds, fiery red-lit clouds, before the lights of night blink on one by one. In the skies as stars, in the windows of homes, along each floor of a high rise city building, the lights blink on and the colors outside fade.
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