One thing about this time of year is that I’m leaving work around the time the sun sets. That’s not all bad, as I sometimes get to see a colorful sunset. Today I left in time to see some color through the trees behind my building. There was no time to get anywhere without trees in the way so I photographed through the trees. I don’t think they ruin this sunset at all. In fact, it was lovely. We have a little more than a month of shortening days so it will be more than two months before they are as long as they are now again. That makes it harder to get photos during the daytime, especially during the week. It’s been quite busy at work and it shows no signs of easing up before next summer.
Tagged With: Sky
Sunset
I stopped at Trader Joe’s briefly after work. There are a few things that they have that make it worth a visit if you are in the neighborhood, although I can’t say I’d go far out of my way in general. I usually leave underwhelmed, although a good friend (who I’m pretty sure will be reading this) works there and I mean no disrespect. It’s just that most of what they have I can get elsewhere more easily. After that I stopped at Great Wall, in Rockville. This store has a lot more that’s hard to find in “standard” grocery stores and I was there mostly for produce, which is generally good there and there’s a lot more variety than even Safeway or Giant, to say nothing of Trader Joe’s (and I needed beets). As I came out, I took this picture of the sunset over the back of the building.
Airplanes At Dusk
I’m afraid today’s photo is pretty lame. I looked out the back door and there were two bright airplane contrails just above the trees, heading west toward the setting sun as the sky darkened with dusk. I thought it would make a half decent photo for today. Unfortunately, by the time I got my camera from the next room, switched to the 100mm from the 24mm and returned ti the kitchen door, the planes were down into the trees. It wasn’t ever going to be a great photo but I think it’s worse than I hoped. So, the only thing accomplished by taking this is that I kept up my photo-a-day streak. For what little that’s worth.
Sunset
Cathy and I went to work together today because the van was in the shop, having lost its serpentine belt in the rain on Saturday. Cathy likes to go to an exercise class on Mondays so we stayed for that. Before her class, however, at about 4:45, she called to ask if I could see the sunset. My office window faces north but I could see color out to the left. I took a few pictures from there and then went to the large conference room on the west side of the building on the next floor up and took some pictures from there. The color ws through the trees but it was really different to any sunset I’ve seen, as least anything in recent memory. To say is was spectacular is too simple. Also, this photo doesn’t really convey the overall feel, which was somewhat eerie. Donna, who works near the conference room asked if I had been outside. She said something strange seemed to be going on. I said, “It’s sunset, it happens every evening around this time.” But I was joking, this really was a strange sunset, and beautiful.
Clouds at Dusk
I was hoping for another nice sunset this evening but it wasn’t to be. The clouds did get a bit of color but nothing like two nights ago and in fact, if I had taken any other pictures today, you probably wouldn’t be stuck with this. We need to be thankful, of course, for the lesser beauties, as well as the greater. As something short of even a lesser beauty, myself, I have an appreciation for the ordinary.
When we were in Rome, quite a few years ago now, we went into St. Peter’s Basilica. As you’d expect, everyone loves the big, central dome. It’s very impressive. But we decided we needed to enjoy the lesser domes. It’s become a saying in our family, “Nobody appreciates the little domes.” We make an effort to appreciate them.
Sunset
There was another nice sunset this evening. I had a little more time today so I was able to walk around the woods behind my building to an area with a somewhat lower horizon. There are still trees but they are several hundred yards away this time. This was just a portion of the sky, taken with a 100mm lens. It was quite impressive for a significant horizontal extent although it didn’t reach all that high in the sky. A wide angle shot would have been mostly dark above and below this. I hope you (not that there are very many of you) don’t mind all the sunsets but we’re getting what we get.
Sunset
Another sunset photo today. I’ve been leaving work around the sunset hour lately (or later but getting sunset pictures from my office or from a conference room one floor up. There isn’t anything particularly special about this sunset but it’s the best of the few pictures I took today. I’m nearing 2,900 consecutive days (and 8 yeas) taking at least one photograph each day. I think one or possibly two of those days the photo was taken on my phone but the rest were taken on my Canon SLR. In that time I have taken over 160,000 photos, which is starting to get up there. A few of them are, I think, quite good.
Watts Branch Tributary
This is a small tributary of Watts Branch, which comes through a culvert under West Montgomery Avenue (before it becomes Key West Avenue). On the other side of the road is a small drainage pond build for storm water management and in which there were beavers living until a few years ago. It joins a larger creek that flows through another storm water management pond between my cuilding and the rest of our company’s campus. It goes back under West Montgomery Avenue again before draining into Watts Branch near the Interstate 270 interchange.
Sunset
I went over to my mom’s this evening to see what was wrong with her computer. When I got there, I took a little time before going in to take some sunset pictures. I had a hard time finding a good spot to see the sky, but this spot worked out reasonably well, overlooking a shopping mall. It’s in the foreground, hidden by the dark trees, though, so that doesn’t really matter, so you can’t really tell. The color was mostly along the lower part of the sky and I took some pictures with the short telephoto lens and others with the 24mm, which on my camera is equivalent to a 35mm, more or less. This is one from the wide angle.
Clouds at Night
Dorothy got home late last night. Well, technically she got home early this morning, at about 1:30 AM. She slept in today and I went to work. Before I left work it rained very hard and my car is having problems when I drive through deep puddles, so I had to be careful getting home. After I did get home, we went out to run some errands and as we left the house, this storm cloud was billowing up above us. The photo, taken at 1/25 second at f/2.8 at an ISO of 6,400, doesn’t really do it justice, but it’s the picture I have for today. You’ll have to trust me when I say it looked really cool in real life. The noise produced by the camera sensor wasn’t something we saw in real time.
Unusual Sunset
As I was driving home this evening the clouds were acting like there would be a wonderful sunset. By the time I actually got home, most of the color was gone, although there had never been nearly as much as there could have been. Nevertheless, I got my camera out and went into the back yard. This photo is looking basically southwards and I am pretty pleased with it. The colors are pretty accurate to what it looked like, with a lot of blue in the clouds themselves and three slashes of orange. I really enjoyed watching it until the orange disappeared and only the blue-grey clouds were left.
Sunset
As I was driving home this evening, I could occasionally see the clouds to the west starting to be lit up by the setting sun. There are very few places on my relatively short commute with a clear, unobstructed view of the sky. Unless the clouds are high in the sky it’s not really worth stopping to take a picture. When I got to Norbeck Road, though, with the sunset in my rear view mirror, I stopped and took a dozen or so pictures. By the time I got home, it was done, so I’m glad I stopped when I did. I love the orange flare coming up the middle of this photograph.
Sunset
I found a new location for sunset photos today. It’s a little off my actual commute but not so much that it’s a real problem and I expect to be there again in the future. The sunset this evening was unusual, with both orange low in the sky (through the trees) and the bands of magenta a little further up, where the clouds were more dense. It was also more fleeting then usual. I took a total of eight photos and between the first and the last, less than two minutes, the magenta lines almost entirely disappeared. I’m glad I stopped when I did.
Sunset
It was a relatively uneventful day today. I got some things done that have been hanging over me for quite a long time. Well, to be more precise, I got started on some things that have been hanging over me for quite a long time, but that’s a big step to getting them finished. There was a team of men working on cutting a tree down in the neighborhood and I took some pictures of that but then we had a pretty nice sunset, so this picture took precedence. It’s wasn’t a stunning sunset but it was very pretty, I think.
Waxing Gibbous Moon
Cathy and I worked most of the day moving things around in our house. One room that has become a catch-all for boxes and miscellaneous bric-a-brac is our guest bedroom. However, Cathy’s cousin and his wife are coming this week so we sort of need to clear it out. It’s high time we did, so that’s fine. We were able to get rid of a few things, mostly things that were not worth even donating, but mostly we just organized and moved things around. The more thorough going through is yet to be done. I did go out briefly to take four boxes of books as a donation for resale and got rid of a half dozen empty boxes that we no longer need. In the afternoon I took some pictures in the yard but none of them are anything to write home about. The moon was pretty, though, so I thought I’d post that for today’s picture.
Rio Pond
I’m not really a big Happy Hour celebrant and I don’t do a lot with people from work outside of work hours. Nevertheless, I went out with eight others from work today and enjoyed myself. It had been a particularly rough day, with a problem on a system I’m developing that I could not figure out. It made no sense and nothing I did seemed to make any difference. Finally I gave up and figured I’d have better success looking at it again in the morning. Then I went out and took some pictures, including this one, before meeting my friends in Uncle Julio’s for an hour or so. I’m pretty pleased with this picture, showing the pond at the Rio as well as Copper Canyon Grill and various other buildings behind it.
Sunset
The sky had the promise of a really spectacular sunset this evening but sadly it didn’t follow through. It wasn’t a bad sunset, mind you, but it wasn’t as fabulous as I had hoped. The clouds were moving fast and it was changing from minute to minute. As you can see in the lower part of this picture, between the houses, the best part of the sunset was too low to be seen from our back yard. Still, it was a worth a few minutes of my time and the ground wasn’t so cold that I couldn’t be out in my bare feet for a little while.
Sunset
When I got home this evening I took some pictures of flowers in the garden, figuring I’d continue with my flower theme. Later, though, shortly after Cathy got home, we were out back and it was clear that the sunset was going to be worth enjoying. So, I got my camera and watched it unfold. First I got some pictures of grey and white clouds with deep blue sky behind them. As the sun sank the clouds turned beautiful colors. They were moving quite quickly and between the movement of the sun (or the apparent movement, I should say) and the very real movement of the clouds, it was changing from moment to moment. I’ll probably get back to flower pictures tomorrow.
Dramatic Sky
I’ve already posted a picture for this date but kind of like this one, so I’ll post it, too. This is the view out of my office window. I was at work later than usual today and the light on the clouds was quite dramatic. I took a few “standard” shots but the sky was so bright the trees went very dark. I took a set of three, exposure-bracketted images and combined them as a single HDR image. It’s a bit unnatural looking but I like it.