The pictures that I uploaded to Picasaweb tonight, were taken on May 30, 2008. As you can see in this first shot, there were a few nice clouds down low. But, sometimes, what you don't see, is that there lots of barely visible clouds up higher in the sky. When the sun is still bright, they just don't show up very well. This is how the night began ...
The lower the sun went, the more visible the higher clouds became. In this miniature version of this next shot, you have to look kind of hard to locate the Saguaro cactus. It's much more obvious in my full-sized original of the picture.
Also, notice up higher on the right side of the shot is a bright spot. These show up quite frequently when there is a very bright spot in the opposite corner of the shot- you know, sort of like the sun! They are refractions caused by the optics in the lense. (At least, that's what I think they are.)
These next two shots have always struck me as a little odd. I really enjoy the colors in the sky. But, I was playing around hiding the sun directly behind the top of a small Saguaro. They are just a little different. At least, there is the full sized Saguaro in the background. What do you think -- does the little round cactus add anything for you?
In the next shot I've moved over to place the sun back behind the full sized cactus again. But, I'm far enough from the cactus that it barely bigger than the sun. When I first started taking sunset photos, I really liked the zoomed-in, close-up shots. But the more I do this, the more the bigger, zoomed-out images are really growing on me. I think that it is important, however, to keep something in the shot to creat a point of interest -- like the tiny little cactus in front of the sun.
Now, in this next shot, quite the opposite of the wide angle shot above, here is what the sky and setting sun look like when really zoomed in. It really amazes me just how much the sky can look all uniform and red (or orange).
Well, back to the wide shot again. Remember that I said at the beginning of this post that I didn't know there were any clouds up high in the sky. Well, about the time of this next shot, the sun had gone below the horizon, and these higher-up clouds were starting to glow.
And, a while later, the sky was beautiful.
And, finally, for this last shot, until after I started taking sunset pictures, I'd never seen a green sky. Once I noticed the green in some of my pictures, I thought that this must be some anomoly of the camera. Surely, the sky couldn't really look green???
But, after I had seen this in lots of shots, I finally started paying attention while actually taking the pictures. And, sure enough, the green really is there!!! It seems to show up after the sky starts getting darker, and lives down low, near the horizon. If you don't believe me, go outside and look for yourself!
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