The Georgia Dome bathed in beautiful sunrise colors

 

Monday Morning Wake-Up

I was up by 5 am making sure batteries were charged and SD cards formatted.

Bauer was jumping around like I was going to take him for a walk. The funny thing is, lately he refuses to walk early in the morning. But, apparently he still gets excited about the thought.

It was cold.

I donned my knee-length, hooded down coat, threw on my camera-laden backpack and walked the 10 minutes to my friend Lauren's.

So early. So dark. So cold.

But, I love being out and about at that hour. There's something about the early morning when most people are sleeping that appeals to me and reminds me of when I used to get up early to go hot-air ballooning. I just prefer it to be a little warmer.

Lauren was ready when I got to her place, and we got in her car.

Her car has butt warmers....ahhhhh yes - grateful for the little things.

We found a parking garage, hoping we could see the Dome from the top. 

Nope.

We parked and walked the 10 minutes to the bridge on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive. We were almost an hour early, and it's a good thing. It got crowded.

Sunrise over the city

 

Waiting

Did I say it was a good thing?

It was good that we had a spot. It was bad that I thought I'd freeze to death waiting for the big event.

My body was warm enough, but my hands were miserable. I even had some little knitted fingerless gloves, but they were all but useless. It's hard to wear gloves and work the camera, which is why I have fingerless gloves.

So. Cold.

At one point, my hands hurt so badly, I felt a little sick. Yikes. Suck it up, buttercup.

But, it was such an extraordinarily beautiful morning. I thought warm thoughts and looked at all the gorgeous colors in the sunrise against the buildings.

I noticed a lot of people barely dressed, having apparently jumped out of bed and failed to put on actual clothes. Those people looked really cold. Some of them were visibly shivering.

A motorcycle cop fruitlessly tried to get the drivers sitting in their cars parked on MLK Drive to move. They ignored him.

I got some wonderful sunrise photos as we waited. It's as if the Dome knew she should put on a show, since this was the last anyone would see of her.

The colors in the sky and the reflections on the Dome and the new stadium looked almost fake.

The new Mercedes-Benz Stadium looked sleek and sexy beside the poor old Dome.

It better - 600 million taxpayer dollars are going into that thing (according to Wikipedia, which I don't consider a particularly reliable source, but I still bet it's a damn lot of taxpayer $$$).

Atlanta sure does like to demolish the old and bring in the new. It's kinda disturbing sometimes how much they do that.

 

 

We have car-eating potholes all over the City of Atlanta and ridiculous, poorly-timed stoplights with no turn arrows, but we got a new stadium - hooray?

7:31am

At 7:31 I looked at my phone in despair. Surely there wasn't a delay? Please don't let there by a delay!

I put my camera up to my face to check, for the millionth time, that my focus was in the right spot.

I started to pull the camera away from my face when I heard a noise and saw a little puff of smoke through my viewfinder and then another louder noise and boom!

That was it! I clicked away as quickly as I could.

The whole thing was over so quickly.

I was expecting something a little louder and more spectacular, but it was still interesting to be there, and I'm glad to have memorialized the event with a few good shots.

Forty-six shots, to be exact, of the GA Dome coming down. Several times I tried pushing the shutter release button and nothing happened. My fingers were so cold, I couldn't tell that my shutter finger wasn't on the button. Thankfully, it didn't seem to cost me any major shots.

The crowed dispersed quickly. We walked back to the parking garage.

There was a man standing at the exit collecting the tickets, and he let us out for free, saving us $10. That was a nice thing to do. We thanked him and got on our way.

Bye-bye Georgia Dome!

I hope y'all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Still working on that Ecuador trip for May - who's in? Email me at susan@susanjphotography.com

Photos from today's post can be found here.