Posts in Category: sunrise
Bosque Sunrise
On every trip to Bosque del Apache for the Festival of the Cranes it is mandatory to get out at least one dawn to see the geese rise…and to experience the Bosque dawn itself. That means leaving your hotel in Socorro before 6am. But it is almost always worth it. You have to decide whether to stop at the ponds on the way into the refuge beside the road, where the geese rest for the night, and try to catch them when they rise. They are closer there than anywhere else on the refuge. Or, if you want the sunrise across the water, you continue on the the main tour loop and drive out to the Flight Deck Pond. It seems as though there will masses of people there already no matter which you choose or how early you get there…but there is always room for one more, if you are willing to park and walk.
These are shots from the Flight Deck Pond. As it turned out, most of the geese were else where this particular dawn…but the dawn itself was typical of one of the November cloudless days on the Bosque.
And the geese did rise. I wanted to catch them against the dawn sky, but most of the flocks came up further north. Still.
And of course once the geese are gone, you still have the Sandhill Cranes wading in the reflection of the sunrise in the water.
All shots Canon SX50HS. 1) and 3) are Sports Mode. 2) is Hand-held Night Shot Mode (the camera takes three very rapid exposures and combines them…I am finding that it comes as close to capturing the real visual range of a sunrise or sunset as I have yet been able to do.) 4) is just a long tel-shot with –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. 2) cropped as needed for composition.
6/17/2012: Prairie Birding Dawn. Happy Sunday!
Birding the high prairie in North Dakota this week has been a real blessing! Such an amazingly diverse area, with all shapes and sizes of watery (and wildlifey) gems hidden in the folds of the landscape, and that prairie sky with all its drama overhead. This is birders at dawn, out towards Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge. We piled off the bus to walk this prairie track and look for Grasshopper Sparrow and Upland Sandpiper. Marbled Godwits circled over head. A muskrat floated like a log in a small pothole watching us. Black-crowned Night Herons and White Pelicans did fly-bys at hill top on their way from one small lake to another.
It was miraculous. Miraculously alive and miraculously beautiful. The image just maybe catches a bit of the miracle. Canon SX40HS in program with – 1 /3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. I exposed for the sky and counted on being able to bring the foreground up in Lightroom. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, as well as exposure balance.
And for the Sunday thought: we are always tempted to call such moments “magical”.. I suppose we mean that they awake a sense of mystery and wonder in us… and we are aware of that the are things going on that defeat the rational mind. But of course there is another word that attempts to catch that sense of wonder and mystery. ” Miraculous.” Miraculous includes the awareness of a specific power for good in action, an attempt, not to mystifying and impress, but to enlighten and uplift. And it is certainly the sense of miracle that fills me in the prairie dawn!
1/29/2012: Space Coast Sunrise. Happy Sunday!
Florida sunrises can be spectacular, and none more-so than those along what they call the Space Coast. I am staying in Titusville, about 5 miles inland from Merritt Island and the Canaveral shore: Cape Canaveral, now the Kennedy Space Center, is between me and the coast. What you see here though, looking like a shadowy landscape of hills against the rising sun, is actually layers of fog over trees. This was taken from the balcony in front of my room, from a higher angle…I had to lean out over railing and zoom in to avoid the building itself. Interstate 95 is right behind the silhouetted palms.
I like the mystery of the shot, the half light and the fog, the bold silhouettes of the palms and the blazing sky.
Canon SX40HS at about 135mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/80th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped slightly at the top for composition and interest.
And for the Sunday thought: dawn and fog. Obscurity with a promise of clarity and light to come. Now if that does not describe our spiritual journey many days I don’t know what does. As Paul says, “now we see as in a mirror darkly” but we have the promise of full sight and true vision to come. And for me part of the miracle is that even in our obscurity, we are able to see the beauty that calls us. We treasure the dawns, we rejoice in the days, we celebrate the sunsets, we bask in the night and our dreams, to rise again to the promise of the coming day. If this, this life, this glorious life and this beautiful world is “in a mirror darkly” then I can barely imagine what the full light of day will reveal. And no…I am not ignorant of the pain and frustration, the ugliness and decay, that is also obscured by the morning fog of our current days (I95 and its traffic of commerce and greed is right behind the palms)…but I see, in the light of the promise, no reason to dwell on it…to dwell in it. It is beauty that calls me…beauty, truth, light, and I move toward it as surely as the sun rises, as the fog dispels, as day comes. I can, almost always, celebrate the fog of dawn in the rising sun. And that, thank God, is also a good description of my spiritual journey.
1/21/2012: Vegas Dawn
I am at the airport waiting for my flight out of Vegas. This is yesterday’s dawn from my hotel room at the Venetian. I like the sliver of moon high in the sky.
Canon SX40HS at 40mm equivalent field of view. F3.5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
1/4/2012: Frosted Seaweed, Kennebunk ME
According to my internet weather app it is 5º outside in southern Maine this morning. Frosty. This is from New Year’s Day dawn on the beach a few miles from our home, with the frost on the seaweed lighted by the rising sun. It makes a nice abstract study, with the mix of textures and colors, unified by the frosty coating. The contrast in the color temperature from the right where the low sun is striking to the left which is still in shadow is pretty dramatic too.
Canon SX40HS at 212mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
1/1/2012: Special Edition! New Year Sunrise
In the middle of writing today’s post, which was, appropriately I think, on Horizons…it occurred to me that it would be a shame to miss the New Year’s Day Sunrise (on the horizon after all) so I made a quick dash to the beach at the end of our road to catch it. Clicking the image above will open the Picasa viewer for the gallery.
You can walk through the album using the little arrows at the left and right of the viewing window, or the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard…or you can select “view all” to see a gallery of thumbs.
And this is what I meant to say about horizons.
11/21/2011: False Dawn Sandhill
I did not make it out to the refuge at dawn even once this trip. With family with me, and the resulting car complications, it simply was not possible. But I did get there early. Sunday morning the eastern sky was blocked by a heavy bank of clouds so actual sunlight on the water was delayed by almost two hours. This shot, with the Sandhill Crane illuminated by the sun near the top of the obstructing clouds, has a dawn feeling, but with stronger light on the bird. Ideal really. At true dawn the bird would have been a dark silhouette, no matter what magic I did with exposure.
The Sandhill, by the way, is not checking out a passing aircraft (or Eagle for that matter). This is most likely a young male trying on his mating moves.
Canon SX40HS at 716mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/250th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, Vibrance (for the light on the water), and Sharpness.
9/18/2011: Late Lake Erie Dawn: Happy Sunday
I went out early yesterday to see if I could find some birds and maybe digiscope a few before the Midwest Birding Symposium vendor area opened. Birds were in fact somewhat scarce, at least where I was, but I got to East Harbor State Park and the shore of Lake Erie just as the sun made its first brave attempt to break the hold of the overcast. Though it was well past actual sunrise, the horizon was streaked with orange, and contrasted sharply with the cold grey waves of the lake.
I took a number of shots. These three move from a wide angle view to zoom in on the details of the dawn.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm, 100mm, and 300mm equivalent fields of view. ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: that bit of warm light forcing its way under the edge of the solid cap of cloud and out over the cold waves speaks of hope and the irrepressable surge of day. The light of life has come into the world and the darkness can not extinguish it, as John wrote, thinking of that other light of the world…and mornings like this it is that much easier to believe. Happy Sunday!
5/1/2011: Sun-rise with Moon and Venus
Happy Sunday!
The sun is just a promise in this dawn shot from the balcony of my hotel room in Crescent Beach Florida where I am working the FL Birding and Photo Fest…but it is a promise that will surely be kept! I was up early to lead a bird walk at Vaill Point Sanctuary (6 species of warblers, Great Crested Flycatcher, Great Blue Heron rookery, Carolina Wren, Bald Eagle, about 60 Cardinals, several Plain Titmice, and, best and last bird…Barred Owl).
Such a dawn sky, decorated with a sickle moon and the bright chip of the planet Venus, is an inspiration in itself, and I could not resist taking a few moments out of my field trip preparations to attempt to capture it.
The Nikon Coolpix P500 has an interesting feature set, which includes Night Landscape mode. The camera takes a series of very rapid exposures and stacks them to increase sharpness, reduce noise, and record night and, as in this case, dawn colors naturally. Generally I am not a fan of such fancy in-camera processing (trickery?…maybe because it generally does not work well), but I have been pleasantly surprised by the effects the Nikon manages. This shot still needed some noise reduction, but it is about as faithful a representation of the dawn as I saw it as one could hope for. And, it would have taken some trickery indeed to capture the image by any other method. I took traditional long exposure comparison shots, and they simply do not compare.
Zoomed in to 84mm equivalent field of view to frame the moon and Venus over the horizon. Nominal exposure as recorded in the exif data, f4.4 @ 1/25th @ ISO 560. I used the balcony rail to steady the camera, with my hand between rail and camera. The in-camera image stabilization helped too.
Processed in Lightroom…primarily for noise.
So, for a Sunday, I am thinking about the role of modern technology in my life…whether it is the programmed image stacking routine inside a camera, or this laptop, or the internet tablet I use to show others these shots, or the whole internet cloud, where this will be posted and were my images are stored. I could live with out all of it, and sometimes, to be honest, it seems a distraction from really living at all…until a dawn like this one…when it all comes together to allow a moment I treasured to be captured and rendered so that I can share it will all of you. And then I think of modern technology as a miracle…oh, not in the sense that phrase is generally used of something we do not understand and can barely believe…where miracle merely stands in for magic…but in a sense of gratitude for all the minds (and spirits) who have labored to create the possibility that I might catch and share such a moment. I see the blessing in tools we have today. I hope that what I do with them honors the creator of the world, the minds, and the miracle…and that these images are a blessing to you.
4/28/2011: Florida Sunrises in Panoramic View
Sunrise over the Atlantic from my 3rd floor balcony in Crescent Beach Florida, two mornings this week. Though the Nikon P500 has an Easy Panorama mode, these were done the old fashioned way by stitching three exposures in PhotoShop Element’s PhotoMerge, using the Cylindrical tool. Clicking on either of them will take you to a full screen view.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 23mm equivalent field of view. Three exposures 1) f3.4 @ 1/100th @ ISO 160, 2) f3.4 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. 1) was taken with the Dawn and Dusk mode, and 2) was taken with Sunset.
Processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Lots of extra fill light in both shots. 1) color corrected with the Auto setting.