Sunrise/Sunset/Sky

Sunrise, Ocean Isle Beach

Those of you who follow me on the various social media outlets of the interwebs have already seen a picture of this sunrise, which I took on my phone and posted the morning of July 31. Unsurprisingly, I took some pictures with my “real” camera, as well, and I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out, as well. It’s actually somewhat amazing how good the phone pictures is, but there are still things I can do with my Canon that the Samsung won’t quite manage.

Sunrise, Ocean Isle Beach

I was going through the images I took and trying to decide which I like best, which is sometimes really easy. Today, though, there were two that I liked and I was having a hard time picking between them. On the one hand, I think this vertical photo is the better image of the sun, the reflection, and the waves. On the other hand, I really like the bird in the first one. In fact, I was thinking about cropping that down to just have the bird, the streak of light from the sun, and the top of the wave coming up the beach. I may do that yet for a card, but this is the whole image.

This is the third and final sunrise that I’ll post from Ocean Isle this year. They were all quite different from one another, which is, I think, one of the things we find so fascinating about sunrises. That and their evanescence. They have to be enjoyed in the moment, because they don’t wait, evaporating like a morning mist. Pictures are nice, of course, but they don’t hold a candle to the real thing. Standing in the waves of the Atlantic, feeling the cool, morning breeze on my face, and seeing the colors and movement of those waves, most of that is lost in the photograph.

Starry Night

The last photo from another busy day. This one isn’t as spectacular as the thunderstorm photo from last night, but I’m still pretty pleased with it. Dorothy suggested that I go out and take some pictures, because the southern sky was so clear and the Milky Way was clearly visible. Well, clear is relative and this was clear if you are used to the east cost of North America, anyway. This was taken with settings similar to last night’s, with the ISO set to 640, f/3.5 and 30 seconds. The lens was a 10–20mm zoom, at 10mm, so a fairly wide angle (that’s equivalent to 16mm on an old 35mm camera, for anyone who actually remembers those). This picture was harder to deal with in terms of “noise.” If I reduced it enough to matter, I lost a lot of the detail in the Milky Way. So, here’s an even better reason to want a full frame SLR. And a trip to the dry, much clearer and darker parts of the country, preferably on the top of a mountain. Still, it’s the best Milky Way picture I’ve ever taken (though that’s not saying much).

A Very Different Sunrise

After the dark, deeply colored sunrise I took on July 28, today’s was very different. There wasn’t a lot of pink, orange, or red in the sky, just a little around the sun. But the clouds were quite pretty and nicely reflected in the water washing up on the beach. Also, after two days of 90°F plus heat, I woke up to about 70°F this morning. It warmed up later in the day but never really got above about 82°F. It was much less humid, as well. Beautiful.

Thunderstorm and Stars

After seeing the beautiful rainbow and then going out to take pictures of the receding storm over the ocean, I figured that was all the pictures I’d take for the day. I did go next door to snap a few pictures of my aunt and uncle and their family, a group of 18. As I came out from that, I was greeted with a beautiful sight. Even this photograph, which I think it pretty amazing, doesn’t capture the real beauty. The sky would be dark. Then, lightning in the clouds out to sea would light them up, sometimes just providing light to the clouds, other times accompanied by streaks of lightning between the clouds and the sea or horizontally between clouds. I set up my camera on a tripod and took a bunch of exposures at various settings. This one was ISO 800, f/3.5, 30 seconds. On the beach, you can see a family with flashlights walking from right to left. Then, the clouds, lit by multiple flashes of lightning. Above the clouds, stars.

Long exposures on a digital camera produces a lot of “noise.” The black areas of the picture were not black, but a mottled collection of colored blobs, small but of varying size. This is a time when a full-frame sensor makes a big difference, because they produce significantly less noise. Still, with the aid of a noise filter on my processing software, I’ve turned this into something usable. I’m pretty chuffed about this picture, to be honest.

Rainbow

Two more pictures for today. A little before 6:00 PM we all went outside to see a very full and then a full double rainbow across the eastern sky. As you can see, I was able to capture the entire length of it with my wide angle lens. Although you cannot quite make it out in this picture, in addition to the secondary rainbow, outside the first, we saw a supernumerary, extra arcs just inside the main rainbow. It was quite a show.

Thunderstorm Over The Atlantic

As the storm moved out to sea, the lightning didn’t abate. If anything, it got more frequent. I set up my camera on the railing of our deck and took some pictures of the clouds. By closing the aperture down and setting the ISO to 100, I was able to get long exposures times. This one was 25 seconds at f/22. That let me capture a few bolts of lightning in a single frame, which is pretty exciting. I like thunderstorms at most times but at the beach they really do tend to be spectacular.

Sunrise, Ocean Isle Beach

As is fairly common at the beach, there was a pretty sunrise this morning. Most of our house was still in bed, but my body rarely lets me sleep much past 6:00 (and sometimes not even that late). It’s one of the “benefits” of getting old, I guess. Anyway, I came down stairs and soon noticed a bit of color in the sky so I grabbed my camera and went out for a few photographs. The house we’re staying in has a room without air conditioning, which for those of use with cameras, is a nice thing. Going from a cold house to a warm, very humid beach is a good way to have your camera fog up. This is especially true first thing in the morning, and by the time you’re ready to take pictures, the light is gone. This sunrise color didn’t last very long but was particularly intense when I went out.

Pretty Evening Sky

It turned a bit colder today but was sunny and nice. In the evening I had a meeting at church and I was a little early getting there. I took some pictures of a large flock of geese that had been walking around on the church property. Shortly after that, I noticed these pretty clouds against the deepening blue evening sky. The clouds didn’t really turn a full, sunset orange, but did get a slight pink to them that really set them off.

This is a composite picture, made from four vertical shots stitched together into a panorama.

Friday Sunrise

We had another beautiful sunrise this morning and I was in the right part of the house to notice. The color didn’t last more than about 5 minutes, so I consider myself fortunate. This image is a little darker than it actually was, but just about as pretty. It’s cooler this morning, but still nice. We have more weather coming our way, if the meteorologists and their models are correct (which I know they are because I’m typing this on Monday).

Sunset From Our Back Yard

It has continued to be beautiful outside and it really feels like spring. I know it’s not even the ides of March and it will very likely get cold again, but we’re all enjoying this while we have it. If nothing else, we’re closer to spring than we were a week ago, when we had half a dozen inches of snow on the ground.

We had a beautiful sunset this evening. With the two big trees in our back yard gone, we have a better view of sunsets and I’ve been happily enjoying them. It’s nice to be able to slide the back door open and take sunset pictures from the steps.

Sunset

Traffic was horrendous this evening and I’m not really sure why. Anyway, as I was sitting in traffic I at least was able to enjoy the sunset. It wasn’t the most wonderful sunset I’ve ever seen but then, very few are, for obvious reasons. It was quite lovely and though there were trees and power lines between me and the most colorful parts of the sky, I was able to take this and a few other pictures while waiting for the traffic to start moving again.

Evening Sky

There was very little traffic on the roads today, mostly because everything was canceled. That was despite the fact that the roads were all basically clear and dry. There was a little ice and snow left on our neighborhood street but the plows never made it here. Even so, I had no trouble and once I got a block from our house, onto the larger neighborhood street, it was totally clear. The sky cleared up and it was mostly sunny this afternoon. This picture was taken just a little before sunset.

Sunset Through The Trees

It wasn’t much of a sunset in terms of lighting up the sky, but right down on the horizon, which I could sort of see between the houses behind ours, the sky had a fair amount of color. With my long lens, I took a few pictures of it through the trees and I like the way it turned out. The rest of the sky was a uniform and not particularly pretty color.

Winter Sunrise

As I came downstairs this morning to fix Dorothy’s lunch and make us each our morning cup of tea, I noticed a bit of pinkness in the eastern sky. I grabbed my camera and went out to get a few pictures. It was fairly cool, about 20°F (-7°C) and I hadn’t stopped to put anything on over my t-shirt. That wasn’t as much of an issue as my feet.

While I was outside, I had a brilliant idea. What if someone were to knit something like a sweater only for your feet. You could have a simple tube, closed at one end and open on the other, that would fit over your feet and would help keep them warm when you go out to take pictures in the winter at 7:00 in the morning. Dorothy threw cold water on my idea (metaphorically speaking), saying she thought I should do a patent search before committing any money to my idea. She said that she thought our friend Nancy had already invented something very much like it. Oh, well. It was just a thought.

Sunrise

Well, actually, it was a beautiful day, so the saying wasn’t right today. They say we may have snow tomorrow, but that’s another matter. Because I didn’t have to get Dorothy up for school today, I didn’t set an alarm. As usual I got up about the same time anyway, but without that annoying noise. As I came downstairs there was an orange light coming in the front windows. I grabbed my camera and went outside to take a few pictures (barefoot and with no jacket, as it happens). What a beautiful sight.

Cloud Reflections

It was a cool but beautiful day today and around lunch time I walked from my building over to the one with our main cafeteria to pick up a salad from the salad bar. I carried my camera with me, which still feels a little awkward after three years of having it with me most of the time. I don’t carry it around at work, although I have it there every day. But walking between the buildings often gives me something to photograph. This is the end of my building as I came back with my lunch.

Sunset Colors on Contrail

It was a wonderfully clear, bright day today. Cool, but clear and bright. I didn’t go out during the day today, except to take a few pictures shortly before sunset. There were more than half a dozen contrails crisscrossing the sky this afternoon and as the sun sank into the west, they all lit up with a beautiful orange color. This one didn’t stick around, but faded from view shortly after the plane was past, but it was the brightest of them all, while it lasted. The plain is heading southwest, possibly towards a landing at Reagan National or Dulles International. When you see planes overhead, does it make you want to travel? It does that for me. I’m ready to go, let me grab my passport.

Moon Through The Trees

One thing about this taking a picture every day thing is that I take pictures of things that in the past I would simply have looked at. Some days the pictures turn out well and I’m quite pleased that I took the picture. Other days I end up with pictures that aren’t really even worth sharing. But, I’ve committed to share at least one picture with you every day. Along with the good, you get the not-so-good. Today, I took three quick pictures early in the day, as I was leaving for work, of the moon through the trees in our back yard. In the evening we happened to go into a bowling alley and I took a few there, as well, but they are even less worthy of sharing. Even though this doesn’t look as nice as it did in real life, it’s what you get.

Sunset

We had a reasonably quiet day today after two days of Thanksgiving (not that we’ve stopped being thankful, of course). Dorothy and I did have a brief outing today to run the chainsaw through a piece of tree trunk for an art project that Dorothy is planning. In the evening, we had a lovely sunset, as you can see. I particularly like the variety of colors in sunsets. Often they are bright orange, but tonight it was a wonderful red.

Weird Cloud Pattern

I was at the school today for the Christmas Bazaar when two friends came to my table and asked if I had my camera with me. Of course I did. They said that’s wait at my table for me and that I should go outside and look at the clouds to the north east. This is what I saw. I have no idea what might have caused this pattern. The rest of the sky was filled with a thin layer of clouds like the surrounding clouds in this picture, except to the west where it was clearing up. Strange.

UPDATE: A friend of mine identified this phenomenon for me. It is called a Fallstreak hole and the formation occurs when part of a cloud of water droplets freezes into ice crystals. Here is the relevant page on Wikipedia and also a page at The Cloud Appreciation Society.