Lake Hamilton Sunrise

Sunrise over Lake Hamilton — the broad lake in the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas, near Hot Springs. The lake runs long and irregular through the hills, and on still mornings the water holds the color of the sky almost perfectly, the far shore softening into the early light.

Photographed in October 2017. The first light on Lake Hamilton in autumn is worth getting up for — the air is cool, the water is glass, and the whole lake goes gold for about twenty minutes before the day arrives in earnest.