Posts in Category: sunset
2/12/2012: Pelicans and Terns against Sunset Clouds: Happy Sunday!
This is another shot from the same Sunday evening, a few weeks ago, that was featured in last Sunday’s Pic 4 Today. Last Sunday it was the Skimmers crossing below the setting sun. This one was taken facing exactly the opposite way, away from the sunset, with the birds (White Pelicans and Terns) framed against the few clouds over the Indian River and Merritt Island which caught and reflected the reddening light. Perhaps because I know it was one of the last images taken that day, it has a going home…going to rest…feeling about it: but perhaps the feeling is actually part of the image, for anyone who knows the rhythms of the natural world.
Canon SX40HS at about 335mm equivalent field of view. f5 @ 1/125th @ ISO 250. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom to bring up the color, and for intensity, vibrancy, and sharpness. Cropped from the top for composition.
And for the Sunday thought: Going home. Going to rest. Part of the natural rhythm of the world. I had a little heart attack scare this week…an unplanned trip to the ER in an ambulance, oxygen, ekgs, x-rays…the whole thing. Turns out it was a strange combination of symptoms caused by indigestion and incipient bronchitis…with maybe a touch of pneumonia. Better safe than sorry.
And I find that I am not really troubled by the event. A thing like that might well bring thoughts and fears centered on mortality, but I am pretty much okay with it. Better safe than sorry. I am safe.
Of course I have no idea how I would have responded if the results of the test had gone the other way. I would like to think that, like the birds against the sunset, I would have seen it as all part of the natural rhythm of life. The birds are going to their night home…to their night roost…and they have no doubt in their minds that dawn will follow the darkness, and they will wake refreshed for another day.
Of course, as far as we know, they have no hope either. Hope is a human…thought? emotion? feeling? concept?…I am not sure there is a word in English to describe what hope is in the human mind and heart. But I do know that hope is a decision…it is a verb…it is something we decide to do, based on all the evidence available to us. We go home, we go to our rest, with (or without) hope in our hearts. It is up to us.
I chose hope. My faith demands it…my faith authorizes it…and, I believe, my faith justifies it. Come night, come dawn, I will wake refreshed for another day. All part of the rhythm. All part of the life of faith.
As true when lying on a gurney in ER sucking down oxygen, as it is on a beach in Florida watching the Pelicans and Terns head for roost against clouds reflecting the setting sun.
2/5/2012: Sunset Skimmers, Merritt Island FL, Happy Sunday!
Last Sunday, after tearing down and packing up the ZEISS booth at Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival, I drove out to Merritt Island for one last turn around Black Point Wildlife Drive in the light of the low afternoon sun. You might say it was my church for the day, or at least my act of worship. I got back to the bridge to the mainland, and the fishing area there on the Indian River, just as the sun was actually setting, pulled in quickly, and took a series of shots of birds in flight in the fading light and against the sunset…as well as of the sunset itself.
These are Black Skimmers. They rose up over the highway and then swooped down sharply to skim the water at the shore. I tried several times, with different flocks, to catch them against the sunset, shooting off a burst beginning before they crossed the shoreline and continuing to follow them out over the river. This is the best of the lot.
Canon SX40HS at 212mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 400. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. I also used dueling Graduated Filter effects, darkening from the top, and lightening from the bottom, to balance the exposure to approximate what I saw.
And for the Sunday thought: “act of worship”? Yes, but…
I certainly do not worship nature, or photography, for that matter. But as I have said before, photographing the natural world, which I take to be the world created by a God who loves, is, for me, an act of worship…as natural as singing songs of praise…and, in fact, very similar to singing. Instead of attempting to surrender my voice to the congregation’s praise, to the beauty and awe of addressing the creator, I attempt to surrender my vision (and whatever skills I have with the camera) to the sense of beauty and awe I find in the experiencing the creation. Unlike corporate praise, the actual act of photography is a solitary endeavor, but then there comes the sharing. No image is really taken or created until it is shared…for it is in the sharing, is it not, that the image takes on life and, shall we say, sings it song. It is my hope always, that the images I share here will at least strike a note of beauty or awe in those who see them.
So, yes, my last loop around Black Point Drive, on a Sunday afternoon, just at sunset, was, and is, an act of worship. Happy Sunday.
1/22/2012: Sunset over North Florida: Happy Sunday!
Coming into Orlando on a flight from Charlotte yesterday, we arrived over north Florida just at sunset, just as tired of my Kindle book and opened the window shade, and just as the plane dropped through cloud cover to show the horizon. We were still 20,000 feet up, and the lakes of north Florida stretched out below us toward a blazing sunset. There was still enough moisture in the air to produce strong radiating rays when seen from above. As it would happen I had my little Canon SD100HS in my vest pocket where I generally carry it while traveling, and I had it out in a second for a few shots out the window. Shooting through the layers of plastic that make up an airliner’s windows is always a challenge. They are never clean and they offer their own color bias and distortions. Still, I continued to shoot as the plane dropped down toward the 10,000 foot limit for electronic equipment. The light of the sunset was so powerful it robbed the ground of much color. I did try an HDR treatment but there was just nothing there in the file to bring up. The effect is still still striking.
Canon SD100HS. 1) 85mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. 2) 65mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/320th @ ISO 125. 3) 114mm equivalent, f5.9 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200. Program. –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought. Sunsets hold a special place in our perception of beauty…they seem to speak to something in nearly all human beings. The day ends in fire along the horizon, and we pause, no matter how much we have left to do…dinner and whatever the evening holds…to take it in. It is something deep in the spiritual in us, I think, this response to the sunset. Something that transcends personality, and demonstrates the ways in which we are all kin.
Here we see it from a unique height across the flat plain of North Florida, dotted with lakes. A different angle…but one that only, for me, intensifies the effect. The sun goes down in a moment of awe that demands a moment of silence, a moment of attention…that prepares us for the night, and signals the hope of dawn. For me, it is the signature of the creator on the story of the day.
12/24/2011: Kennebunk Plains, Christmas Snow?
The great Christmas Snow Storm of 2011 has come and gone. Of course, it fell mostly as rain. If it had been a few degrees colder, we would have had a good foot and a half of snow cover today…but, alas, it was not to be. I went out in the late afternoon when the setting sun was trying to get out from under the cloud cover in the west to see if there was more snow inland, but evidently it turned to rain at least an hour before the storm passed there too. There were only remnants. Still, the light in the sky on the retreating cloud mass was worth the trip.
This first shot is the view north and east. Turning right around and facing south west, we have the horizon view.
And finally a zoomed in shot of the same horizon.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160. 2) 50mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200. 3) 173mm equivalent, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. All received some color temperature adjustment as well as dueling Graduated Filter Effects to lighten the foreground and darken the sky.
11/20/2011: Bosque Sunset
You go to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for the Cranes and Snow Geese show, but the landscape and the light certainly add to the experience. Dawns are spectacular and so are sunsets. Add the birds and you have a truly unique experience. We stopped at one of the pans along the road back to San Antonio to watch the Cranes settle as the sun set. It was not the most spectacular of New Mexico sunsets but it was still special.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. The wide shot used Night Landscape mode. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for Sunday, I believe that any experience that awakens awe in a human being opens a connection to the Creator…however momentary and however unconscious…there is a second there where God is very close to breaking through the mundane shell. A percentage of people, of course, are never the same again. It wakes a hunger that must be satisfied and that can only be satisfied by a perminent connection to our Creator God. Bosque is a place where such moments happen every day. Go for the Crane and Snow Geese show, but don’t say I did not warn you.
8/11/2011: Phoenix Airport Sunset
As an experiment I did not bring my laptop on this short business trip to Portland Oregon and back. Just my Xoom tablet, and a EyeFi SD card for the camera. With the EyeFi card I can transfer images wirelessly from the camera to the Xoom. I can do light processing on the tablet with apps like PicSay Pro and PhotoEnhanse…neither of which are Lightroom by a long stretch but which are surprisingly capable editors on the Android platform. PicSay’s only major limitation, in fact, is that it can not yet save full resolution files. PhotoEnhanse does save full res but it is a one trick pony…doing a tone mapping and blackpoint adjustment to stretch dynamic range.
I am also writing and posting this from the Xoom using the Android WordPress app, Quickpic, and Google+ and Hootsuite for Android.
Okay so the image already. I had an unexpected 3 hour layover in Phoenix on my way to Portland and I could not resist playing with the sunset out the window of the terminal. The Phoenix skyline makes an interesting backdrop and there are interesting ray patterns in the dark clouds. I placed the setting sun right behind the tail of an airplane, which also produced an interesting effect.
Nikon Coolpix P 500 at 40mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Program with Active D-Lighting.
Processed in Camera with Quick Retouch. Processed on the tablet in PicSay Pro.
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7/3/2011: Sunset over Back Creek, Happy Sunday!
I happened to look out the window at about 7:30 last evening, and the light across the yard sucked me out and sent me down to the ocean. I did a loop around the Kennebunk beaches, and found myself at the confluence of the Mousam and Back Creek just at sunset. The holiday weekend folk were packing and leaving the beach, so I was actually able to park and watch the sunset.
It was not dark enough for the Nikon’s Night Landscape mode to work, but this shot uses the Backlight/HDR mode…it is three shots assembled in camera for extended dynamic range. I have been disappointed with the effect during daylight, but here it was just the thing to capture a relatively natural balance between the bright colored sky and the landscape. Too often sunset images catch the spectacular sky against a dark, or even completely black, foreground…which is never the way we actually see it in nature. In reality there is always considerable light on the foreground until well after the sun is completely set. Trying to bring up the foreground in post processing sometimes helps, but at the cost of considerable noise in the image, and effort with the software.
This is a closer shot from the same location, a few moments later, using a longer zoom setting for framing.
I love it that the camera was able to maintain detail even in the trees against the sun. Both of these will benefit from a larger view by clicking the image to open the Smugmug lightboox.
I will admit to being (maybe too) interested in the technique and technology that make such shots possible with the cameras we have today…but, of course, the hardware and software only have value for the results they produce. That more natural balance of light over the landscape, with the full intensity of the sunset sky above, is worth capturing because it makes the image more than sunset shot…it makes it, as I see it, an opportunity for the viewer to more completely participate in the event itself…to be there, where the photographer stood…and experience the sunset as the photographer experienced it. And this is, again, I think, a good thing…a value…and what photography can, at its best, accomplish.
These images are not photography at its best, of course, but they are satisfying attempts to capture the feeling of the place and time. I think. Sunset over Back Creek, July 2nd, 2011.
We are, perhaps, already in Sunday territory in that discussion, but one of the things I love most about photography is that opportunity to share each other’s vision and experience…to share worlds…and what I see most clearly, as I experience the growing community of photography on flickr and facebook and everywhere on the web today, is that the sense of what is beautiful, admirable, interesting, sad, touching, valuable, and even humorous…what is worth taking a picture of…extends across all cultures and races…is something we, as children of the creator…share, no matter where we were born or how we were raised. Oh, I do occasionally find a photographer who is into a slice of the world I don’t particularly want to look at, but it is rare, and even so, I can generally see the value he or she saw, even if it is not my value. And, many times, I am simply stunned by what others see and capture, because it could so easily have been what I saw, if I had been there. I so I would like to think anyway.
Nikon Coolpix P500 in Backlight/HDR mode. Nominal exposure info: 1) 53mm equivalent field of view, f4.4 @ 1/250 @ ISO 160, 2) 175mm @ f5.4 @ 1/160th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity, Sharpness, and intensity. 1) was cropped slightly for composition.
3/6/2011: Sunset, Mission Bay, HDR
Happy Sunday! I have taken this shot many times over the last 8 years on my annual visit to San Diego. I spend most of each day at the Mission Bay Marina Village Conference Center talking optics with prospective ZEISS owners and one of the highlights of the day (no pun intended) is sunset over the marina. This year I have a new tool to apply, since I have begun to actively experiment with HDR. The hard part of a sunset shot is holding any kind of realistic detail in the foreground while capturing the subtle shades and brilliant hues of dominant sky. HDR helps.
Canon SX20IS at about 60mm equivalent field of view, three bracketed exposures centered on –2/3 EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.
And here we take the closer view, which is even more of challenge for the sensor.
And, since it is Sunday: we love sunsets…sunsets and dawns when the sky takes fire move the most self-centered of us to an appreciation, to an apprehension, of the beauty of nature. But there is something deeper there…sunsets stir something in our souls…we feel them, as much as see them…we are moved. There is a longing in the time between times (as the Celts would say), a yearning, an opening to something other and beyond ourselves. I am not a believer in magic, but I can believe more fully in miracles at sunset. The sunset has to witnessed either with silence or with song…with contemplation or with praise…with supplication and with hope. It is in the truest sense, a holy time. Is it any wonder the camera sensor struggles to capture it…
11/28/2010: Crane at Sunset
Happy Sunday!
Bosque del Apache Sunsets can be spectacular (see last Sunday’s post), especially if you are where the Cranes and Geese are coming in to roost for the night. At some point in the process I stopped shooting the sunset itself and started trying to catch cranes as they passed in front. This shot was intentionally exposed for the silhouetted crane and the amazing colors of the sky.
Canon SX20IS at about 500mm equivalent. f5.7 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Sports program.
Processed for intensity and silhouette effect in Lightroom. Chromatic aberrations corrected and noise reduced.
And, for my Sunday thought: sometimes all we can see is silhouettes against the persistent glory that illuminates our world, at least to the eyes of faith. And sometimes that is all we need to see. A speck of present life, even in silhouette, provides the perspective we need to face the future with confidence.
But maybe that is a bit much to hang on a crane against the sunset?
11/21/2010: Bosque Sunset HDRs
Happy Sunday!
I went out after my day of work manning the ZEISS booth at the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro NM, to digiscope Prairie Dogs in the last light of early evening, but the PD town was already closed down for the day. There was not even a single sentry on guard.
So I headed back to town and supper. Of course I had to pass right by three flooded fields where the Sandhill Cranes come in for the night, right at or around sunset. And, on day like yesterday, the sunset itself is a show. I stopped and parked and waited. As the sun sank, the parking lot filled with folks who had the same idea. During the festival, sunset parking is at a premium anywhere on the refuge, and they actually take buses in to particularly choice vantage-points otherwise inaccessible to the public. People pay $5.00 to ride the bus.
What you have here are three HDR shots: southwest in line with the sun, north along ridge that hides the mountains behind, and southeast where a larger mass of clouds behind the mountains took the color. The top shot is the last I took, just before the color died, when it was at its most intense.
I find it hard to believe that there are people anywhere who would not be moved by such a sunset, with or without the spectacle of the returning cranes. Such awful, such awe-filled, beauty in the fire in the sky at day’s end…there are no words for what it says to our souls…but there is no doubt that it speaks.
When the color died, everyone got back in their cars, or boarded the buses, and headed back to town. Route 1 is a steady stream of tail-lights for 8 miles into San Antonio. From the air it must look something like the cranes coming into the roost for the night 🙂
I am not sure what the Sunday thought is in the Bosque sunsets, but I certain it is there. Being there, along the dyke by the flooded field, and knowing that people were gathered all over the refuge to witness the same sight, with the air filled with the “music” of the cranes and geese, as the sky colored and as the color died, was very like being part of a worshiping congregation. I know who I worship, and I find it hard to believe that in those moments, we aren’t all, whether we acknowledge it or not, caught up in the same act of worship. Our awe may be as variously colored as the three images above, but it is the same awe, our birthright and our heritage as human beings…children of love.
Canon SX20IS. Three exposures per image, auto bracketed at minus 2/3EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix, processed in Lightroom.