The Night I've Been Waiting For!

Sometimes the sky is absolutely amazing. What God has designed is beyond all possible comprehension.

As I have been working my way through my sunset collection, and trying to get at least some of them uploaded to my Picasa Web Albums, I've been approaching this particular night of July 21, 2008 (Yes, I know - that IS more that a year ago!) with great excitement. It was indeed a very magical night. I was shooting this night with the Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd, since I did not have the Canon Rebel-xsi yet. But, that is actually part of this story.

You will recognize the cactus in these photos, as I have photographed it literally thousands of times because it is probably about 500 yards from my house - quick and easy to walk to. By my count, on that night I took 102 photos! That in itself indicates that it was probably a pretty good night. Since there are so many pictures from that night, I'm going to try something new -- I've created a short movie from some of them, along with some credits at the end, giving credit where credit is due!! Here is how the night progressed:




The final picture in the video is a special one to me. Shortly after taking these, I noticed that the theme for Circuit City's Photo Contest of the Month for August, was "Sunrises and Sunsets." It hit me right between the eyes that I should try entering one of my photos. Of course, I wouldn't stand a chance, but I should give it a try any way.

At that time, my sunset collection consisted of about 8,000 photos. The rules of the contest allowed for each person to enter only one picture. So, I proceeded to go over each and every photo in my collection several times. Whew! Once I narrowed the search to about 500 pictures, I asked my wife and granddaughter for their input. Of course, they refused to even look until I further reduced the number of candidates. So, I put some more sweat into it, and got the number of choices down to about 70. Then I turned it over to them. They fussed and fumed for a while, and further narrowed the selection down to about a dozen. And then it was back to me again.

I looked at their choices, and although I liked them (after all, it was I who put them in the list of 70), I just couldn't pick one of their dozen as my one favorite. I wanted to pick a shot that I both liked myself, and one that I thought the judges might like. So, I thanked my wife and granddaughter for their efforts, and returned to the list of 500, and picked the one that is at the end of the video above.

To complete the story, and to be real careful to give credit where it is really due, the photo I entered into Circuit City's contest took first place in the August contest. The result was that I won the Canon Rebel-xsi camera from them. The irony in this is, that before I received the camera from them, Circuit City announced that they were closing all their Arizona stores. And after that, they announced the closure of all their stores. But, I am very happy to say that the camera did arrive, I'm very thankful for it, and I really enjoy it.

Now, as for the credit that is due, I have said it before and always will, that God puts the beauty in the sunsets. He has simply given me the great love for that beauty, and the ability to push the shutter button. I also think that He must have helped me select which photo to submit to the contest. Mind you, my wife and granddaughter were slightly disappointed that I hadn't picked one of their choices. However, since the photo that I selected actually won, they have gotten over their disappointment.

Again, here is the wining photo:



Thank You, Lord!!

And you can see more photos from this night in my July 2008 web album. Just know that I haven't finished uploading all the pictures from night that I want to. So, more will be coming.

Where Ever You Are ...

... You just gotta stop, and take a picture! So, you had better be ready, huh?

You know, I find it rather strange, that a good portion of my collection of nearly 16,000 (!!!) sunset pictures, I can remember taking. Well, OK, not all of them. But, I got around to posting these shots from last July (a year ago) to my Picasa web albums, and I can remember where I was, and what the circumstances were, when I shot them.

In the shot below do you recognize the reflections? Can you identify what they are off of?



On this day in July, I was on my way home at the end of the day. And, of course, I was racing the sun. It was obvious that there was going to be a nice sunset, and I wanted to get to a place outside, or at least mostly outside, of town where I could place myself behind some mountains or cactus. But, the setting sun waits for no man, and I couldn't get out of town fast enough. I was headed South on Val Vista Drive, when I came to this somewhat open area. So, I just pulled over and started shooting. OK, now can you figure out what the reflections are off of? No, that's not water. They are off of the roof of my car! It turns out that I rather liked the results, even though they were quite unexpected and unplanned. Sometimes, you just accidentally learn something new!

So, after clicking a few shots, I headed on down the road. But, I hadn't gone far when I had to pull over again. I really liked the pastel colors of the clouds. This time, I at least moved clear of the car.

Sometimes the Water is Nice

We had some beautiful clouds throughout the day. And, as they usually do, I was afraid that they would completely disappear before sundown. But, alas! Some of them were kind enough to stick around. So, tonight I rode my trusty bicycle up to the community lake, hoping to get some good reflections. The first thing that you are probably thinking is "Where is the cactus?" That's a fair question. And the second is probably "What are lakes doing in the middle of the Arizona desert?" That's an even better question.

As for the cactus, well, sometimes I just like to broaden my horizons (no pun intended). And, after all, who doesn't like reflections off of water? As for what the lakes are doing in the desert, well, who doesn't like reflections off of water? This community lake is by the playground area and near the community center. This puts it near the streets. And streets bring street lights. When I am shooting around cactus, I try to avoid getting any man-made objects in the pictures. If I can't completely avoid them, I at least try to hide them behind the cactus or a handy bush. But, hey, when you are at the lake by the street, your gonna have street lights! You can see them in all of the following shots. It's just almost impossible to keep away from them. So I do my best with them, and try to make them fit in as best as I can.

Any way, when I first arrived at the lake tonight, the sun was still behind a cloud. But, I could see that there was a clear area beneath the cloud that the sun should come bursting through. This first shot give you and idea what the cloud was like that the sun was hiding behind.



As I was waiting for the sun to make it's appearance, I rode my bike around the lake a few times, trying to pick my positions for my shots. I decided on the location below for the shots of when the sun first dropped below the clouds. I tried to include the reflection of the sun itself, as well as reflections of trees, light poles, etc.



Whenever there is a tree nearby, I like to use some of its branches to add a little interest to the foreground, as in this next shot.



A little later, I moved around to another location, where the pool of water is larger and more still. The still water provides smoother reflections.



And, tonight we had a small crescent moon. Click on this next shot to see it a little larger. I tried to capture the moon and its reflection along with the colors of the sky.



Then I hopped on my bike and made my way back home.

Wow! Where does the time go?

I ended my last post by saying that I had just thrown my back out of whack. Well, I'm glad to say that I am up and about. I'm just taking it rather easy, as my back is still kind of edgy. Add to that the fact that I've been really busy at my work. Add to that the fact that we haven't had a very rainy season this summer. Not much rain, not many clouds. So, I've only been out shooting sunsets a couple of times in the last couple of weeks.

So, I thought that this time I'd talk about a couple of photos from last July (yes, a year ago!). I have posted these pictures in my Picasa web albums, so you can see these and more, there.

The first shot is one that I took when I stepped out my back door just to check the sky and see if I was going to need to go shoot the sunset. As I looked at the sky, I was really stunned at the sun's rays through the hole in the cloud. So, I ran back in the house to get my camera, and was very happy to see that the hole had not vanished when I got back to the yard. I try to not take pictures of roof tops and light poles, but sometimes you gotta take the picture where you stand. Any way, I love the sun's rays around and through the cloud.



It was looking like some good things might happen in the coming sunset, so I hit the road in search of of the setting sun. Here are a few more pictures from later that same day.

I'm Still Here!!

I could start by asking, what else could go wrong? But I won't. If I did, you might think that I was just whining. On the other hand, I know that each of you has experienced much of the same. The happy news is that I'm now back on the air!

OK, so what's been going on?

Computer crash - One day, my computer decided that it didn't want to boot up any more. The Windows boot procedure reported that a certain file was missing or corrupt. After spending about a week trying to restore a copy of that file and get running again, I finally gave up. The next approach was to buy a new hard drive, and start over by restoring from the factory restore disk. Of course, this puts the machine back into its factory new state, which means that every Windows Update needed to be reinstalled, and every program that I use needed to be reinstalled. What with only being able to work on this in the evenings after getting home from work, this took several weeks to get back up again. As for all my photographs, I was able to install the old hard drive as a second drive, and copy all my pictures to the new disk. I wasn't so concerned about loosing the picture files, since I keep a copy of all of them on a external USB hard drive, and on burnable DVD disks. So, I was quite certain that I could recover them all. Note to all -- MAKE SURE TO BACKUP ALL OF YOUR IMPORTANT FILES!!!

Office furniture exchange - In the midst of trying to get my computer back up again, my wife wanted me to exchange my office furniture with hers. It would seem that it would have been easier to exchange offices, but she didn't want to do that. Did you ever play that computer game Sokoban? This games goes back several years ago; it was a simple game involving a bunch of boxes that you had to push around to get them into the proper places. There were 50 levels to solve, and some of them were extremely difficult. But, not nearly as difficult as actually exchanging furniture between two rooms. In reality, it involves at least four rooms in the house, and more likely every room in the house. And that's exactly what it did. And to start off, all of the computers had to be shut down and moved to a safe waiting area. It took me about two solid days to get the furniture moved. And then it took about another week to get the computers back up and running. And, of course, my wife's computer had to come first. Anyway, both my wife's computer and mine are back up and running. But, there seems to be a lot of stuff left all over the house. The entire household has not recovered yet. So, the job is not yet finished.

Through it all, do you think that I stopped taking photos. No!!! Alright, here two photos from just last night.





So what's next? Well, today I threw my back out, and right now as the sun is ready to set, it's raining real hard to boot. So, no pictures tonight. Hopefully I'll be up and at 'em real soon.

Oh No - It's June Already!!

Where does the time go?!?! For a while, I thought that I might be able to catch up with photo uploading and blogging. Well, here it is, and we are more than half-way through the month of June. And, I only just now finished uploading the pictures that I took last June. Yikes!!

I'd like to present just a couple more shots from last June. Make sure to click on the following pictures to see them in a larger format. There are a lot of details to see in these shots. No matter how many sunsets I've photographed, I never cease to be surprised by something new. If the clouds are in just the right position, and the sun has a clear view, when the sun just goes down below the horizon, even when it is no longer shining on you, it will be shining on the bottoms of the clouds above you. And wow! Usually, the clouds turn red. But, there are times when they turn an almost brown color. And the bottoms of them can look all puffy and billowy.

In the first shot below, you can see that the sun is just about to drop below the horizon. Due to the stuff that is in the air, the color of the sunlight shining on the cloud bottoms makes them look brown.



In the following shots, I just wanted to show what I thought were some really beautiful clouds. Make sure to click them to see them larger.









Believe it or not, I'm all done now with last June's photos. I think that now I'd like to spend more time talking about current photo shoots, rather than talking about year-old shots. So, here is a picture from a couple of weeks ago.



That's all I have for right now. Life has been quite busy, as has probably been the case with you, also. I certainly hope to not be so long before making the next post. Till then...

Almost the End of June

Sooner of later, I'm sure that the month of June will come to an end. But, until that time arrives, I have some more special picture to share. After all, last June, we had some really great sunsets.

We are very near the end of June. These shots were taken on the 26th. So, there are not that many shots remaining before we finally get in to July. The first shot below shows how great the sky was looking. As the sun began to disappear into the haze at the horizon, it turned its typical beautiful Arizona Orange. Above that, was a patch of blue sky. And above that, was a cloud bank that was beginning to take on a brown cast.



Zooming in a lot shows what almost looks like a Martian landscape.



And then it was time to start playing around. I repositioned myself to put the sun behind some trees. After all, I do like having something of interest in the foreground.



Once again zooming in, reveals the Martian landscape again. But, this time with those rather non-Martian looking tree leaves bracketing the shot.



As the sun continued down, it encountered another bank of clouds. The next two shots show the sun partially hidden by the clouds. I really like seeing the big round ball of the sun with a streak of clouds in front of it.





Here is one last shot from that night, just before the sun began to sink below the mountains.



Alas, to let you know that we have had a few nice sunsets more recently than a year ago, here is a shot I got just a couple of nights ago. The sun is setting in the West, and this shot is looking Northeast. I've mentioned before, sometimes the best stuff is happening behind you!