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Here and There…Now and Then |
Rockville, Jupiter, and Venus
We had dinner with family this evening at a favorite Chinese restaurant and when we came out, the sky to the west was that wonderful, dark, almost-black, blue overhead fading to a paler blue towards the horizon. Jupiter and Venus were quite close together, seen here on the left a little above the center of the photo. In the other direction, the moon was quite beautiful and had Saturn visible right next to it.
Sunset, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Pretty much everywhere has sunsets. Same sun, even. Some places the atmospheric conditions are generally more conducive to pretty sunsets than others, but they can be fine wherever you are, if you are fortunate. We had a lovely sunset after dinner this evening after a rainbow before dinner. This is looking southeast, actually, which generally isn’t the direction for the best sunset pictures, but when you are in a town or city, sometimes you don’t have an uninterrupted view to the west and you have to make do. This will do, I think.
Sunset Panorama
I hesitate to post another sunset but they seem to be popular. This one is a panorama made from three individual shots that I stitched together. They were taken in the horizontal aspect, where often I take a longer series of vertical shots. In this case the line of color was fairly narrow and with my 100mm lens, the shorter height of the images when horizontal was enough to get what I wanted. We were out in the upper part of the county for a birthday party for a friend when I noticed the color in the sky. I walked around to the front of the house and took these from the road, looking down the cul de sac to the west.
Richmond at Sunset
Cathy and I went down to Richmond for Dorothy’s graduation from her intern program today. In the evening, after a brief encounter with the historic Ebenezer (inside joke), we went to Brown’s Island and enjoyed the view of the James River. We saw egrets, herons, and quite a few ospreys, both flying and sitting on nests.
After that we had a pretty good dinner of barbecue at Alamo BBQ. As we finished eating the sun was sinking in the west and the sky was lighting up. We walked up into Jefferson Park where we had a pretty good view of the sunset over Richmond.
Sunrise Easter Service
One of our favorite aspects of the celebration of Easter is the sunrise service at Fourth Presbyterian Church. For a long time Rock Creek didn’t have a sunrise service and in general doesn’t make as big a deal of Easter as some churches (and hardly mentions Palm Sunday at all). So, we go to the church where we met, and where Cathy’s mom still goes. Dorothy knows quite a few folks there, as well, having participated in their youth group quite a bit over the years.
Last year I set my alarm clock to the wrong time and we only got there as the service was almost over. Previous years we got it right and this year I got it right, again. It was a chilly 40°F this morning, which is cool but not really bitter and certainly not as cold as it has been in some previous years.
I only took a few pictures. It is a church service, after all. In the first few the sky is nearly black. A little later it was the most beautiful, luminous blue. This is one of the early pictures.
Covenant Village
Our youth retreat was at Covenant Village again this year. I really like it there, especially the quiet. It was 18°F this morning when I got up though, which is more like a winter retreat than a spring retreat. There were clouds moving across the sky all day and it was quite lovely. To the south from the main meeting room there is a hilltop field that you can see through the trees. I went out to take pictures and the sun was shining on that spot and it looked quite nice, I thought.
This is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photograph, made from three images taken at different exposures and then combined into one image. This process allows you to capture detail in shadows that would otherwise be black while still getting highlight details that would normally go pure white. Sometimes it it overdone and way too obvious. For all I know, this is one of those times, but I think it’s a pretty picture, anyway.
Contrails
The sky was a beautiful blue this morning but was criscrossed with contrails from a bunch of jets, either coming to or leaving from one of the local airports. I don’t know where everyone is going but there were a lot this morning.
This is the view from our kitchen door at about 7:15 a.m. It made me want to travel. Just get on a plane and go anywhere. I’m not particular, I’d be happy to be anywhere else.
A Final (We Hope) Snowfall
The forecasters all got this one about right. It’s been relatively warm so it didn’t really stick to paved surfaces but the grass was covered and it was another beautiful morning. After the last snowfall and then the warmer weather, I think most folks around here were ready for winter to be over but we got this one, last dusting just to remind us that it can snow in the spring, as well. Because it didn’t affect traffic and I didn’t have to worry about shoveling the driveway, I was perfectly happy to enjoy this snowfall.
Another Sunset
It’s been feeling decidedly springlike for a little while now and with the period of daylight hours shifted to a bit later in the day, we had some time after work to go for a walk in the neighborhood. Of course I brought my camera, just in case, but I only took a handful of pictures. As we were heading back home, walking to the west, the sun was setting through the trees.
Sunset, Out Back
Are you getting tired of all these sunsets? I know they are beautiful, and all that, but is too much of a good thing a bad thing? If so, I can stop, or at least slow down a little. It does seem that they come in waves. We’ll have wonderful sunsets or beautiful sun rises for three or four days in a week, then we won’t have one again for a month. Not sure why that is. Still, I generally don’t complain when they come along. I quite like them, really. I opened the back door and took a bunch, including this one, this evening. While I was doing that, Cathy, who had stayed a bit late at work, called to say there was a great sunset. Yep, I noticed.
Sunset One, Looking Up
I wasn’t sure what I’d have a chance to get photographs of today. Cathy and I were heading from work out to Potomac because the president of Gordon College was in town and we had been invited to meet him, along with other prospective and potential students and their parents. It happened to be at the home of some friends of ours. We stopped at the library to return some books and I waited outside, enjoying the clouds, quickly moving across the sky.
When Cathy came back outside, we had about 45 minutes before we needed to be there and we didn’t fell like getting there early. So, we drove to MacArthur Boulevard and then down to Old Angler’s Inn and walked down to the C&O Canal. It was a bit muddy and we were not really dressed for hiking but we walked up the tow path a little way to a spot across from Sherwin Island. We watched the sun go down and light up the clouds.
Sunset Two, Looking Down
As we walked back, I kept turning around and taking pictures. As I crossed the bridge over the tow path, I took these two shots. the first of them, above, is (obviously) looking up through the trees to the west. The second, to the right, is looking down into the cold, still waters of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. I couldn’t decide which I liked better. I think they are both pretty nice, so, I’m posting them both.
If you know me, you’ll be surprised to learn that I didn’t take any pictures at the meeting with the folks from Gordon.
Another Foggy, Rainy Evening
Last Wednesday I posted a picture that turned out to be fairly popular, if the comments and “likes” on Instagram and Facebook are anything to go by. In that picture (see: Fog Amid The Trees, March 04, 2015) there was a beech tree against a backdrop of tree trunks. This evening is was actively raining, not just foggy, but the effect in the woods was very similar. Like last week, traffic was a bit slow in spots and as I waited to move I took a few pictures out the window. I don’t think this one is quite as good as last week’s and I really should know better than to try to reproduce something that’s already worked, but here you are.
Cathy In The Snow
I don’t think anyone will be surprised that I’m posting pictures of snow today. The forecast was pretty accurate, with the snow starting to fall at about 7:00 a.m. and coming down pretty steadily until the late evening. In all we had about seven and a half inches of new snow, piling up on top of about five inches that was already on the ground and covered with a layer of ice.
Early in the afternoon Cathy and I walked to the grocery store. On the way, I took a few pictures of her with the gently falling snow swirling all around. She also took a couple snaps of me, but I’ll spare you those. Actually, in them I am wearing the same jacket and hat as in the picture on the Who I Am page. That photo was also taken during a snow storm, although it was from quite twelve years ago, on February 16, 2003. I really suppose I should have a more recent picture of myself. I’ll get on that.
Norbeck Road
The second photo here is of Norbeck Road with the snow coming down. It was falling quite steadily but the wind was not terribly strong. Walking home it was blowing into our faces, though, which did make the return trip a bit more taxing. We were gone about an hour and enjoyed being out. It was nice, though, to have a warm, dry home to come back to.
We truly are blessed.
Fog Amid The Trees
Driving home today there was a disabled vehicle with a police cruiser blocking one lane of Norbeck Road. That slowed things down considerably, as you might imagine. It did give me more time to enjoy the foggy woods above Rock Creek. Because I was stopped a fair amount, I was able to take a few pictures. They don’t perfectly capture the mood, but I think this one is pretty good, especially with the added color of the beech tree in the foreground.
Urban Sunset
I suppose technically this is a sub-urban sunset, as we were in the suburbs, but it’s certainly not a rural sunset. We were in Rockville, paying a visit to Second Story Books this afternoon. As we left the sun was sinking into the west (as it does most days) and the sky was turning orange. There was no way we were going to get somewhere wide open for a beautiful vista so we pulled into the parking lot of a local business establishment (Aladdin Carpet & Floors, to be precise), and I took a few pictures through the power lines and construction equipment across the street.
Sunset Over Safeway
As I was driving home today the eastern sky in front of me was quite beautiful with a line of clouds running almost due east-west straight ahead. I took a couple pictures of it as I was stopped in traffic. Then, I stopped at Safeway to pick up a few things. The western sky, over the top of the shopping center, only had a few small clouds but they were quite lovely. With my long lens and standing up on the side of my car to get a little higher up and over the foreground distractions, I was able to get this picture. By the time I got out of the store, not only was the sun down but all the clouds had moved off and the sky was a brilliant, deep, indigo blue.
Orion
It was pretty cool out when we got home late this evening. The wind was blowing and it was clear, with only a few clouds quickly moving across the sky. Orion was setting over our house and I got my tripod and went out to take some pictures. You can see his belt, the three stars Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, running horizontally across the middle of the picture. The bright star at the top of this picture is Betelgeuse (Orion’s right shoulder). The star closest to our roof is Rigel. Other stars are Meissa, Bellatrix, and Saiph. Sirius in Canis Major, the brightest star in the night sky, is just over the top of the tree to the left in this picture.
Winter Sun
It has been cold a bit lately and there is snow and ice on the ground. This evening I was looking out the window of my home office and seeing different patterns of ice on the window. This somewhat abstract image, which I named “Winter Sun”, is actually the out-of-focus light of a street lamp shining on the ice riming the window pane and seen through the screen. The image was much more orange as taken but I adjusted the white balance to get a cooler, bluer color, more evocative of the winter landscape.
Sunset
Shortly after we got home from Richmond yesterday there was a really nice sunset. Because I already posted three photos from Saturday and because sunsets aren’t terribly rare, I decided not to post any of them. Today the sunset wasn’t quite as spectacular but still pretty nice, so, today you get a sunset picture. That’s the way it goes.
Winter Sunrise
It was a bit chilly this morning, somewhere around 18°F At about 7:00 I noticed that there was a bit of color in the western sky. I grabbed my camera and then paused long enough to put on my shoes. I figured I might be out for a little while and under 20°F I usually wear shoes if I’m doing more than grabbing the mail. It was a wonderful sunrise, as you can see (this is to the east, of course). With the rain and snow we’ve been having it was very welcome.