"Yin and Yang"

I was at Cape Hatteras last month to try and capture a sight of one of our heavenly visitors in the night sky - Comet Catalina. The comet is somewhat unique since this would be it's only ever visit to the inner Solar System before being ejected to interstellar space forever. It was by no means an easy target to locate and photograph in the night sky especially for someone who's never done that before.

But this is not about my attempts at capturing Comet Catalina (although I did manage to view and capture it). After I was done looking at the comet, I settled by the beach next to this pier, one of my favorite places on the North Carolina Outerbanks, to hear the ocean's mesmerizing soundtrack. I still had about 2 hours to go before sunrise and so I was just sitting and enjoying the unseasonably warm winter in December and just looking at the stars, Venus, Jupiter and Mars in the night sky. I suddenly noticed this big cloud about 5 minutes in streaking just below bright Venus. On a hunch, I decided to capture an image to see what the cloud looked like and a short 15 second later, I saw the start of what turned out to be one of the most perfect sunrises I have borne witness to. The cloud had started to just pick up the first rays from the sun, with about an hour and a half to go before sunrise.

I love the juxtaposition of every single element in this image. The fading of the night sky and stars with Venus shining valiantly as the sun comes back to herald the start of another day, the stretch of unbroken cloud over the hurricane damaged pier and the sheer beauty created in an otherwise damaging act of Mother Nature (the hurricane, not the sunrise :) ). This duality is what inspired the title of the image.

If you're near the NC coast, this location is a must stop. It is close to the town of Buxton and the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

Thank you for stopping by.

#colorful #goldenhour #hiking #weekend #roadtrip #waterlust #OBX #NC #USA #Pier #Frisco #CapeHatteras #abandoned #beach #beaches #blue #bestof5 #lovemytown

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