A cloudy day -- too cloudy

Well, today I was hopeful that the sunset would be one of those real great ones. But, I'm afraid that today was not the day. We had lots of clouds all day. But, it was too cloudy this evening. In fact, we almost didn't even have a sunset -- just increasing (decreasing???) grayness. Sometimes, the sun breaks underneath the clouds and lights them up from the bottom side. Wow!!! However, tonight, there was only a little color right at the horizon. So, I got a few shots of my nearby cactus. As I was coming back home, I stopped to take a couple of shots of my street with the clouds still showing in the background (above-ground??). The exposures of the street scenes were 25 seconds at F13 ISO 400. This allows the street lights to add a real eerie glow to the streets and houses, but also allows the clouds to show up real nice.

I have a running debate with a real good friend of mine (Tom O) who lives in Michigan. I claim that sometimes we do not have sunsets or sunrises. I contend (jokingly) that if the sky is so cloudy that you can't tell when the sun sets or rises -- that it didn't actually happen. My friend insists that whether I can see the sun set or rise, technically it did. OK - technically he's right. But, when you go out to take pictures of a sunset, and you can't see it happen -- I still say that it didn't happen.

I hope to create an entry, or a page, or something, in which I can explain the cameras and equipment that I have been using to take my sunset pictures. I'm going to look into that when I am done with this posting.

Also, if anyone has any questions about what I'm doing, I'd be happy to try my best to answer.

Here are the basic principals that I have been working by so far: 1) God makes the beautiful sunset or sunrise, 2) I put the camera into its 'sunset' mode, and 3) I aim and press the shutter button. That's all. (OK, maybe there's a little more, but not much!)