At the northeastern shore of Harakka Island at 5 am in the morning, watching the sky slowly turn red, waiting for the sunrise, freezing in the brisk wind (+ 4 degrees Celsius, but feeling colder) I tried to calm the Canada geese couple nesting nearby, close to the spot were I had placed my a tripod. I waited for sunrise; the official time was 5.17. Impatient I started my camera at ten past five, to have some extra material. And then, to my horror the camera started to warn: change the battery pack. For a moment I considered whether running up to my studio to fetch a new one would be an option, and then decided to wait and see how far the battery would last. And it lasted until 5.16. Fair enough for a start.
 
This was the beginning of a new experiment, or perhaps I should call it an exercise, Mornings in May (working tittle), that I decided to do now, when I have to opportunity to spend some time here. Most of my work on Harakka Island has been recorded in the afternoons or evenings. The Year of the Rat, for instance, was documented once a week before sunset, and Year of the Rabbit in the afternoon at three o’clock. Now I decided to focus on the mornings, but only for one month, at least to begin with, the month of May. In May the sun rises early in the south of Finland, earlier every day until midsummer and the first of May or May Day, which is a carnival here, is a good day to start.
 
Early spring is a beautiful time out at sea, when everything changes slowly at first, because the sea is still cold, and then bursts into bloom. Especially the old bird cherries here are amazing when flowering at the end of May. From the spot I finally chose at the shore you cannot see them, though; I wanted to have a clear view of the sky and the sea, and no foliage to hide the view later this month. The bare branches in the image are of small aspen, I think, more slow to grow than the birches, which have tiny leaves already. The aspen, too, will have big leaves soon.
 
I am not sure if I can make an image every morning, since I have some trips to do, but my aim is to have enough mornings to see how the spot where the sun rises moves towards northeast. It is actually rather hard to determine where exactly the sun rises, and ordinary calendars indicate only the exact time at each location. There were some clouds on the horizon this morning, but I think the sun was a little to the right in the image. That means it has space to move to the left, towards northeast.