Mogshade Pond, New Forest, 2 Jan 2018, 07:30

Same place, different time and another finger-numbingly cold and silent winter morning by Mogshade Pond. As the blue hour draws to a close, the new day is heralded by the first hints of red streaming from a hidden place far over the eastern horizon where dawn has already broken, before reflecting off the wispy distant high clouds and into our consciousness. Even so, light levels are still low, and a long 10-second exposure is needed which fortuitously records an evocatively ethereal mirror image on the pond surface of the tranquil scene evolving by the second in the upper half of the image.

Although I was lucky to be soaking up the serenity in solitude this time, this is why you so often find photographers here in the freezing pre-dawn silence, some travelling great distances to root themselves to their favourite spot. Some scenes are worth returning to again and again. A change of light, a change in weather, a shift in the season - they assemble, the beads of a massive cosmological kaleidoscope, rotating, turning, never the same twice, transforming your consciousness with a fresh spectacle each morning.

Olympus MD-EM5ii 24mm(equiv) f4 10sec ISO100 Processed in Lightroom for macOS (basic light settings only)