Tag Archives: sunsets

Winter is Here . . . Late, but Here Nevertheless


It’s hard to believe that on December 8 — less than one month ago — we were in this:

Z3 Roadster

Seeing sunsets such as this:

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Indeed, we had beautiful sunsets on New Year’s Day:

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Then just two days later it all turned to this:

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Yesterday I couldn’t even get the car out of our neighborhood before getting stuck in the ice and snow at the bottom of the hill.  I didn’t get it back up the hill until almost 11:00 that morning, when the street lost it’s sheen of ice and the snow turned to slush.  Since I couldn’t get to work, I toiled the day away working in my home office.

As of Saturday we were still suffering the effects from the storm that two days previously had dropped three inches of snow at the airport, and considerably more up here on the mountain where our home is located.  When I awoke Saturday morning the car was caked in a layer of ice and the driveway was a slick sheet of sheer slipperiness.  Sunrise brought fog and a solid layer of low-lying clouds cast their death-like pall upon the landscape much like Dracula’s castle casts a long shadow at sunset upon the wary villagers far below.  Meanwhile, the roadster cowered in the garage, shivering at the prospect that I might take her out before the sun shone once more upon the land.

And you don’t even want to know what this weather is doing to my solar power production.  But I’m going to tell you anyway.  The day before the storm we produced almost 30 kWh.  On the very next day production dropped to 5.54 kWh.  The next day saw 8.99 kWh, and Saturday we were back down to 8.01 kWh.

Sunday brought a respite from the clouds, not so much from the cold.  But before the clouds completely disapated we were treated to one of the freakiest fogs I’ve witnessed since moving from England back in the mid ’70s.  The fog crept up the slopes of the Franklin Mountains, filling the arroyo behind our house on its trek:

Freaky Fog

Freaky Fog

Freaky Fog

Freaky Fog

Freaky Fog

Freaky Fog

Meanwhile, facing away from the fog and toward the Franklins we were treated to a spectacular, snow dusted landscape:

Looking the other way toward the mountain

Looking the other way toward the mountain

By mid morning all traces of fog were gone and most of the clouds had left us only to return at sunset to give us a spectacular burst of magenta beneath icy cold blue:

Sunday's Magenta Sunset

Sunday’s Magenta Sunset

All in all, it was a fairly photogenic four days.

Later this month we’ll once again be escaping the dread of winter for warmer climes and water sports.  Upon our return I shall fill your heart with photographs of the warm Caribbean sun.  But, until then, hang in there.  Spring approacheth.

Meanwhile, if you have snow in your area and you want to see how to photograph it so that it doesn’t come out gray and washed out, revisit my article:  Honey, Why is the Snow so Gray and Your Face so Dark?

Following those tips you’ll be able to take photographs of snow such as those above or these:

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Filed under Humor, Photography

Fun Foto Friday


Views, sunsets, and views of sunsets.  El Paso has it all.  If you’re squeamish about heights, then perhaps the Wyler Aerial Tramway is not for you.  But keeping your two feet firmly planted upon the ground doesn’t mean that you have to miss out of views of this magnificent gem of the Chihuahuan Desert.  There are other views that may be reached by automobile or, if you’re so inclined, even bicycle.  One such place is Scenic Drive.

Unfortunately on this particular day we had in the air a thick layer of smoke.  No, not urban smog.  This smog was of the forest fire variety—in this case, from the devastating Whitewater-Baldy fire in the Gila National Forest several hundred miles west northwest of El Paso.  Yeah, the fire was that bad.  The daytime shots below were taken on June 3, and the smoke was much worse than it appears.  I managed to marginally mitigate the smokey effects by upping the contrast and increasing saturation in post-processing.

But visibility-reducing smoke during the day often means spectacular skies with vivid colors after sunset.  The twilight pictures shown below were taken June 12 after sunset.  The camera used was my new Canon PowerShot G1 X set atop a carbon fiber tripod.  Shot settings were ISO 100, 1 second exposures, with f-Stop set between f2.8 and f5.6.  Final images were tweaked in post processing for color saturation and contrast.

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Filed under Photography, travel

Another Sunset—March 14, 2012


Another spectacular sunset as seen from our backyard.  Sure hope you aren’t getting bored with these.  This one occurred last Wednesday.  The pictures were taken in raw format with a Canon EOS 5D using a 24-105mm f4.0L zoom lens.  The camera was set to daylight white balancing and using the “Standard” picture style modified for slightly increased saturation (+1).  Conversion was done using Canon’s Digital Photo Professional with corrections made for lens aberration.  I then straightened and cropped the resulting JPEG conversions in Google’s free Picasa photo editing program.

The short version of all that is that the colors and intensity you see are pretty much as they were to the naked eye with only a minor bump in color saturation, mostly in the reds.

This first shot was taken handheld at ISO 800, shutter speed 1/400th, aperture f9.0, exposure compensation -⅔:

Sunset as Casa Wicker—Wednesday, March 14, 2012

This next one was also taken handheld, but I rotated into the portrait position to capture the deep blues of the skies above the reddish hues.  The shot settings this time were ISO 250, shutter speed 1/200th, aperture f5.6, exposure compensation -⅔:

Framed to take in the dark blue skies above the reddish clouds and golden sunlight

If you like these sunset photographs that I post from time to time and would enjoy seeing more, leave a comment telling me so.  And if you really like them, share this link with your friends via your Facebook page.

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Filed under Photography