Posts Tagged ‘skyscape photography’
Just Observing
I was watching part of a climate-themed exposé on Public Television last night where two men were having a conversation, obviously in front of cameras, although those were out of sight. There were different cameras aimed at each person’s face, allowing directors to edit it so the view constantly alternated back and forth as they spoke.
Since I was not fully engaged with the topic of their conversation and wasn’t really listening to their words, I found myself thinking about the apparent sincerity of their exchange, while their peripheral vision must have been filled with a camera lens and the person holding it. Reality shows have so normalized scenes of people purportedly behaving normally despite the presence of camera crews that it begins to feel like we should be able to watch everything happening at any time, anywhere in the world.
Saturday evening, I witnessed something in real life that wasn’t recorded. Asher and I were relaxing on the observation knoll at the high spot of our undulating driveway, watching the horses graze near the road in the hay field while the planet rotated our view of the sun ever closer to our horizon. When the unique loud buzz of a couple of dune buggy-styled side-by-sides came racing down the road from the north, it startled the horses. They took off like the race horses they once were. It is a spectacular sight.
Beyond the pure beauty of a thoroughbred sprinting at top speed, there was also the sound of pounding hooves from all four horses.
Yesterday, Asher and I were sitting there again, watching the sky.
It looked like it was the air that was racing this time.
Cyndie was on her way home from the Cities, and called to ask if I had seen the waves of clouds in the sky. She stopped and took pictures, which looked a lot like mine.
I like the fact that we were seeing the same thing and that we both decided to take pictures of our views.
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Wild Sunrise
I thought the photo I included in yesterday’s post was an interesting sky but then I captured this view of the sunrise while feeding horses:
Just another day at the office for me.
And I gotta say, these four wonderful horses we take care of have been especially charming to be around lately.
Being a couple of old retired people, Cyndie and I took in a Tuesday matinee at the Hudson Theater to see “A Complete Unknown.” We both thoroughly enjoyed it. I feel sorry for the folks who got upset at the folk festival where Bob Dylan “went electric” in 1965.
It’s really wild to be reclining on the bed in the den with Asher sleeping on me one minute, and then after a mention of the movie idea from Cyndie, find myself sitting in front of the big screen an hour later. If I thought the horses were being charming, Asher is making a case that he is rather irresistible himself.
Timothée Chalamet had me thinking I was hanging out with a young Bob Dylan for a couple of hours there. I found Edward Norton as Pete Seeger to be wonderfully convincing. The movie had me wishing I could relive the unique experience of hearing these Dylan songs for the very first time like so many people in the film were depicted doing.
There are plenty of artists whose music doesn’t grab me until I’ve had time to discover and develop an appreciation for it. I tend to think that would have probably been my experience with Dylan’s early songs if I was old enough at the time to even know they existed. When he was all the rage in the New York folk scene, I was playing with toy trucks in the dirt outside or on the perfectly patterned floor rugs near the bay windows in our old farmhouse.
I do have a memory of hearing “Hurricane” for the first time in 1975 and being mesmerized by the way he told such a dramatic story within the captivating melody.
It’s kind of like looking up to unexpectedly find a fascinating sky at sunrise, unlike anything you’ve seen before.
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Just Before
The proverbial expression “it’s always darkest before the dawn” is commonly heard in reference to tough times but what about when you are standing out in the woods all night long? Well, since dawn is the first appearance of light before sunrise then it makes sense that it would be darkest at that point.
Maybe there deserves to be a phrase for the moment just before the sun becomes visible on the horizon. It’s well after dawn but not yet sunrise. That is when we get some truly spectacular sky views around here.
From one color extreme to the next, these two images were captured just days apart.
It’s always frequently occasionally the most interesting or colorful just before the sun rises above the horizon.
Thank goodness for a wide-open view to the east every morning.
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Dazzling Display
In the middle of being distracted by how much Asher was fixating on the scent he was manically following along our North Loop trail’s pathway, I noticed the sunset was ablaze in this spectacular deer-hunter orange glow. I wanted to see if I could get a picture of the scene but would need to redirect Asher somehow to allow me to move beyond pine trees that were obscuring the view.
With time of the essence, I resorted to my tried and true obedience technique of yanking him unceremoniously by the leash to break the spell of the (I assume cat) smell he was following and drag him in a 90-degree direction past the trees.
Asher is so sweet to accept the rude disruption and allow himself to be reluctantly forced to follow me against his will. We must look like such a smooth-functioning team.
Bam!
Got it.
I struggle to comprehend the angles involved in illuminating the clouds overhead that look so low in the sky and so far from the horizon, especially with Earth already turned past the point of being able to see the sun. I assume it is that the clouds are higher in the sky than I perceive.
It seems like an optical illusion because so much of the rest of the cloudy sky lacks any sunny color. How are the sun’s rays missing the rest of the cloud deck but hitting clouds below?
One minute later, the show is over and the color disappears. The evening becomes a dull gray that soon fades to black.
It’s such a treat to witness dazzling displays like this that happen for such a brief period. I didn’t wish to be walking Asher at that hour but look at the reward I got for doing so.
I’m going to need to ruminate on the lessons available for me in that experience.
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Nature’s Magnificence
It was a beautifully warm sunny afternoon that found Cyndie and me splashing in the lake to clean duck shit off the inflated floating platform in the swimming area. A thankless task because not long after we leave, the ducks return and make themselves at home again. A price we pay to co-exist with wildlife.
At the time, we had no idea stormy weather might be lurking nearby. As the dinner hour approached, pizza from Coop’s was chosen and I got elected to drive into town to pick up our order. Emerging from the trees onto the road to Hayward, a view of the open sky revealed a most spectacular display of roiling cumulonimbus clouds that were so engaging I struggled to pay appropriate attention to my driving.
While waiting at the bar to pick up our par-baked circle of deliciousness, the two tv screens overhead began to display ominous-looking warnings about a thunderstorm in Sawyer county. Based on what I had just seen in the sky, I wasn’t surprised in the least, but the folks around me who were oblivious to what it looked like outside were caught as unaware as I had been 10-minutes earlier.
It just didn’t feel like a storm-threatening kind of day.
With the pizza box safely stowed on the seat beside me, I checked the radar view on my phone before setting off and saw we were on the backside of this long line of storms that were percolating just to the southeast and moving away from us.
I called Cyndie and suggested she check out the view, knowing her deep appreciation for cloud formations. By the time she was able to see it and take pictures, the clouds had lost some of the initial splendor of the freshly blossoming thunderstorm that I was able to witness, but because we were granted a rear view of the event, it still looked impressive.
As the rotation of the earth moved the sunlight closer to our western horizon, the storm in the distance began to glow and bounce vivid color off the lake for a whole nother visual presentation.
Isn’t nature magnificent?!
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A Speck
Cyndie has wowed me with another sky pic. I have cropped it to exclude the ground, leaving a spray of thin clouds smeared across the blue with a half-moon all lit up in broad daylight.
But there’s more.
Up near the top there is a speck that she hadn’t noticed at the time. I tried to brush it off my screen.
A high flyer soaring almost out of sight.
For as inconspicuous as it is, I think it disproportionately adds a lot to the image composition. Even though that dark spec barely catches my eye, knowing it is there provides added depth for me.
Or, I’m just thinking too hard. I simply like the image she captured. Down to the last speck.
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More Sky
We seem to have fallen into a pattern where the sky is our focus for photography of late. Cyndie shared this wonderful sunset view yesterday:
As I enter the final month of commuting to the day-job, this brings to mind the sunset of my career in electronics manufacturing, which next leads to the sunrise of my expanding days on the ranch. This is where I thought I would be shortly after we moved so far away from my place of employment nine years ago.
Back then, I thought I might find work closer to home so I wouldn’t have to drive to the far side of the cities for work. I never planned to keep going back to the old job all these years.
We didn’t really plan on living in the midst of a global pandemic, either, but now that’s what we’ve got.
Leaves me a little timid about guessing what the next few years will bring. For now, caring for our rescued horses and coming up with a different way to keep chickens are two highly likely areas of focus.
And beyond that, a lot of soaking up our glorious views of the always fascinating sky.
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Wild Sky
The sky was alive with energy last night when I took Delilah out for her evening walk.
It feels like that energy is going every which way.
Delilah’s energy was a little off-kilter when I decided to take her out. Cyndie left yesterday for a trip with her mother to visit Barry and Carlos in Boston and Maine for a week. Cyndie had been gone for under a couple of hours when Delilah started waiting at the door to the garage for her return.
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It’s going to be a long week if she keeps up with this perseveration.
Of course, after about six days, I will be joining her at the door, similarly pining for Cyndie’s eventual return.
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Relative Something 