Changing Light for 13 years: Creating What Comes Next

Rosamond Salazar
1 day ago
4 min read

As I stand in this part of my life, I feel something shifting. I am no longer standing only in the place of remembering. I am no longer looking back only to understand what was lost, what was dimmed, or what I had to survive. Those losses shaped me, yes, but I do not wish to build this season around them. I honor them quietly, then turn my face toward what is alive in me now. And what is alive in me now is creation.This is my season of creating - right now it is in creating the second edition of Searching for Faerie, Finding Me. It feels like returning to the same magical path, but with stronger feet, clearer eyes, and a heart that knows more than it did before. This time, I am not only writing from the ache of what I once needed, I am writing from the excitement of what I now see. There are stories in my head waiting to be placed on paper. There are visions that come to me in color, shape, light, and paint. There are images that ask to be mixed, layered, softened, brightened, and brought into being - and they will all come… in their own seasons - after this season of the second edition.

As I was looking through photos to feature, I realized something that I had not fully noticed before. I started taking pictures of sunrises and sunsets in 2012, the same year my father passed away. I cannot clearly remember why I began doing it, but perhaps some part of me knew. Perhaps it was my way of honoring his love for the changing colors of the sky. Perhaps it was my way of honoring his life, his passing, and the beauty he taught me to notice. Without realizing it, I had been gathering light for years. Now, I am featuring a sampling of sunrise and sunset photos I have taken over the last thirteen years. Each one feels like a small piece of memory, a quiet witness to the life I have lived since then. They are not just photographs of the sky. They are records of moments when I paused, looked up, and remembered that the beautiful memories with the backdrop of the beautiful colors of the sky. Through grief, change, uncertainty, healing, and growth, the sky kept changing colors, every day with different hues and models with the only constant being the uniqueness, the change. Change after all has been the only constant in my life. Organizing 13 years worth of photos that capture the changing of light as I saw and experienced it:

Changing light photographs from 2012 - 2015

And I think that is what life is truly about - the constancy of change, and the constancy of creation. As every morning greets the world with a sunrise unlike any other, my creative pursuits change: a page is added in a book, a sentence is adjusted, a layer of paint is added and a color is adjusted. Ultimately the day’s future, as unique as the sunrise earlier in the morning, is created. I have always been good at imagining things, and through living life, calling on courage and work - I have slowly but finally make them come to life. I have imagined, endured, and will continue to imagine more of what is still to become. I am looking forward to taking the fragments, the colors, the memories, the hopes, and the dreams, and turn them into something that carries light.

Changing light photographs from 2016 - 2017

The first edition of Searching for Faerie, Finding Me was born from a search. It was the beginning of finding my way back to the girl who believed in wonder and magic. This second edition feels like an achievement because I can see clearly what should have been better said and illustrated in the original edition. The experience has felt expansive and purifying at the same time. While the message wholly remains the same, i have allowed myself to create more freely, to put on paper the worlds I have carried inside me, to let the colors speak better since i no longer feared to use the darkest, deepest or wildest colors that i held back in the original version fearing it was “too much”. Too much be damned, I am now willing to let all the colors show. This is where I am now. Not too much. Probably not perfect. Touched by life. Alive, awake, and creating. I am learning that the future is not something I want to paint as vanilla, i will paint it as blue, as purple or as red as I can. It is something that I create - with every word, every brushstroke, every choice - as speaking specifically to this season of me. That is probably the truest magic of all - to dream it, live it, then create it the way i think it should look and feel like. Enjoy ten years of sunrises and sunsets — ten years of gathering light. May they remind you to pause, look up, and notice what still glows.