Oh Boy, Dust!!!

With my heartfelt apologies to those of you who suffer from dust allergies (I know all about it because I'm a serious allergy sufferer too, but, I take shots and they work good!!), I love a dusty night. The last several mornings have been real hazy, and that makes for some real interesting effects. But, then again, the sun is up before I am, so I haven't gotten any shots of that. But, today we have had a lot of wind. And here in the desert, wind means dust. And dust means nice sunsets!!!

This first shot is as I was hurrying out into the desert to find my favorite cactus. There were just a few clouds in the West, and I just love it when they partially obscure the sun. This usually means rays and shadows in the sky. You can also tell from this that there really was a lot of dust in the air.



And then there is my cactus. The sun just looked like a big bright spot in the sky, not a crisp circle like it does most of the time. Plus, in the following shot, it is still partly behind the little cloud.



Zooming out a quite a bit reveals the nice purple color in the sky. As you can see, the sun still just looks like a big bright blur. I love the shadows in the sky that the clouds cast.



In this next shot, I like the big yellow spot that the sun is. You can tell that it is still just a big blur, due to the dust.



But, in this final shot, taken just two minutes later, something in the layer of the atmosphere changed, and the sun was once again the fine, crisp circle that it is supposed to be.



Of course, I took a lot more shots that I am showing here. After the shot above, I zoomed in real tight on the sun, and sure enough it has a nice crisp outline. Go figure.

Water Is Wonderful!

I got home a little early tonight so that I could go for a walk with my son-in-lay Tommy, and two grandsons, Aizik and Lucas. I let them pick the direction to go, and wouldn't you know it, we ended up down by the community lake. And, wouldn't you know it, I just happened to have my Fujifilm camera with me. Here we are at the West end of the lake, with the setting sun to my back. Notice the nice clouds. Gee, almost seems like I might have planned it this way, huh?



Oh well -- Always be prepared. We continued our walk. Part way around the lake, here is a shot looking back at the setting sun. I tried to frame a couple of trees in the foreground to add some interest. The clouds were looking great.



If you look close in the shot above, there are a couple of decorative light towers in the middle of the lake. As you can see below, I like to position myself so as to line things up in unusual ways. Below, I placed the sun directly behind one of the towers. Not that you really tell from the small shot below, but it adds something to the shot anyway.



I also like to partially hide the sun behind trees and things like that. It also helps the reflection to show up a little better. In a wider shot like this one, the blue sky shows up better too.

Darn those street lights!!! Oh well. Big sigh.



Here is a shot with the sun back in the middle of the lake again. The sky is beautiful. And, I really like the reflection of the tree's silhouettes in the water.



After the sun finally goes down below the horizon, things slowly get a little darker, and the camera can increase the exposure somewhat. And, that allows the reflection of the sky and the clouds to show up better. In the shot below, I rotated the camera into portrait orientation because I wanted to be able to show the clouds higher up in the sky, to show that they were beginning to glow.



But, as below, I generally prefer landscape orientation. So, this next shot was taken right after the one above. Notice that it shows those great street lights again. Arrrggghhh.



And, finally, after a few more minutes, the direct sunlight is no longer shining on the overhead clouds. Even though I really love those extra bright clouds, I also am really fascinated when they take on the soft pink glow as seen below. These soft pink clouds almost form a frame around the shot.



Well, I think it was another worthwhile night. And, I got to go for a walk with the grand kids. Woo hoo!!!

Some Nights Are Pastel - Some Are Not

I don't think that I am every going to see every possible type of sunset. Oh sure, some of them seem to be just about like some other ones that I've already taken pictures of. But, just when I'm not expecting anything new ...

Mostly, I like to take my pictures looking in the direction of the sun - that means facing West for sunsets, and facing East for sunrises. But, sometimes the greater beauty is behind you, or beside you, where you may not be looking. The shot below is from last night. In this picture, I am shooting South. The light created a very wispy, pastel look in the clouds. Can you still call it a 'sunset' even though you are not looking at the sun??? Or is it just a 'cloud glow' or something like that?



Today, I had been watching the sky ever since about noon -- nothing but clear skys. Even as late as about 4pm -- nothing but clear skys. So, I figured that I could take the night off. But, a little after 6pm, I looked outside and saw basically what you see in the next shot. To the West were these great clouds already beginning to glow. So, I jumped into my boots and literaly took to running. And I'm glad I did.



In the next two shots, you can see that the sun is about to break beneath the clouds. I almost always shoot these at -1 EV, so that the brighter spots in the picture (like the sun!!!) are not totally too bright. And, this seems to greatly help bring out the colors, as well.





About the time that sun goes down below the horizon, it begins to light up the bottom of the clouds and can create that famous Arizona Orange, as you can see below.



And then, for only a couple of minutes, the sun is positioned just right to shine on the bottoms of the clouds that are overhead. I mean really, God has an amazing sense of the spectacular, doesn't He?

A Surprisingly Fine Night

We had light clouds most of the day, today, and I was very hopeful for tonight. But, of course, by the time that sundown was approaching, most of them had disappeared. There were a few remaining off to the West, so I decided to go out to a place I hadn't been for a while. Boy, am I glad I did!!! God had some surprises in store for me.

It was hard to pick just a few shots to post tonight. But, without further ado, here they are...













What do you think? Was it worth going out tonight?

Trees Do Make Nice Silhouettes

I was late heading for home tonight, and the sky looked incredibly cloudless. We are setting high-temperature records for this time of year - near 90 deg. F. But, I could see that there was a lot of pollution (or just dirt) in the air, and this usually makes for great oranges. When I was about half way home, the sun was just about ready to go down. I could estimate that in about 10 minutes I'd reach this place, where I've taken photos before. So, I planned on making a stop.

There is this great big tree there that makes great silhouettes. I'd have liked to be able to get the sun directly behind the tree, but unfortunately, the tree is on the other side of the fence, and the fence is posted with No Trespassing signs. At this time of the year, the sun is still setting a little South of due West, which meant that I could not position the tree directly in front of the sun. It won't be too long from now, that the setting sun will be a little to the North, and I'll be able to line it up a little better with this tree. I just need to remember this as I am driving by!!!

Is it just me, or does this shot make it look a little like the tree is trying to reach out and grab either the sun, or that approaching airplane?



Zooming in a little more shows of the mountains in the distance. Too bad about the power poles though.



And, since the power poles are not going to go away, how about making the sun look like it is balanced on the power lines?



In this last shot, I aimed the camera a bit down so that it would lighten up the overall image a little. I wanted to show the road and the nearby terrain. Even with that, I had to use Picasa to lighten the shot some more so that the road was actually visible.

Not Too Many Clouds - Just Another Orange Sunset

But, add something interesting in the foreground, like a tree, and things turn out quite nice.

When I looked at the setting sun tonight, I could see that there weren't very many clouds. But there were several contrails. I usually like the contrails, even though they are obviously not natural - we all know just what they are. I find them to add a very nice little detail. And, the sky was turning nice and orange. So, I decided to give it a go. I settled on a couple of trees, and spent my time working around them.

These three shots show that even for just a plain orange sunset, with a little help from a tree, the results are pretty nice. A like these a quite a bit. They show that you can get quite a different look to things just by positioning the foreground objects a little differently.



You know, it always seems to amaze me that even when shooting directly at the full sun, there can be enough detail in the shot to make it interesting. I always like the big orange (or is it just white??) ball.



And in this shot, there is enough sky showing to reveal that it really is blue up higher, and that the orange is quite low. There is just enough of hint of the sun to create the nice bright spot.

Railroad Bridge at Sundown!!

Sounds like a Western movie title, huh?

Tonight I thought I'd try a new subject - one that I've been intending to shoot for a quite a while now. It wasn't a super-splendid sunset, but as I was checking the sky as sundown was approaching, I did notice some wispy clouds off to the West. So, I headed for this bridge which is located just North of Coolidge, AZ.

The following shot was taken with the Canon EOS Rebel xsi. To help enhance the red's and orange's of the sunset, I set the white balance for 'shade.'



After it started getting dark, I thought I'd try for some more 'star' shots. I don't know how well these next two are going look, being so small here, but I hope that you can see the stars. (Try clicking on the picture to make it a little bigger.) I'm located toward the North end of the bridge for this shot, looking South. The glow at the horizon is from the lights of Coolidge, which by the way, I had to hide behind that bush so they wouldn't be too bright.



And finally, I really like this next shot. I'm looking up a hill at the cactus. The orange glow is from the lights of Phoenix (about 30 miles away) shining on those wispy little clouds I mentioned earlier.