Tag Archives: sunset

Please Come Back Before Sunset

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Some late day departures after the Flag returns included F-15Es, F-35As, L159s and A-4s.  You don’t know how long anyone is scheduled to be out but you find yourself hoping that they will all make it back before the sun sets so you can get some arrival shots in the nicest light available.  Once they are gone, it is a case of watching the time and crossing your fingers.  As it was, we got lucky.  They came back in a steady stream with all of them showing up as the sun was at its best.  Arriving over Cheyenne is not ideal from a sun angle perspective at this time of year but we still got some nice angles.  Some turned tighter while others went wider so we got to try all sorts of angles out to see which picked up what light was remaining.

Sunbathing Cormorant

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I had finished up a shoot and was driving back towards home but decided to divert to Kenmore.  The evening light was looking good and I thought some floatplanes might be returning to base.  By the time I got to Kenmore, it must have too late as I didn’t see any planes.  However, there was a cormorant sitting on one of the posts near the end of the jetty.  As the sun set, he was stretching out his wings to gather maximum warmth.  How could I resist yet another cormorant shot?

Manhattan Sunset

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My departure from New York was out of Newark Airport.  The day was coming to a close as we taxied out for departure and the turn after take off gave me a view back across towards Manhattan.  The sun was getting low in the sky so, while the sky behind the city wasn’t glowing, the light on the city was really nice.  Not a bad view as you start the long trip home.  Fortunately the winds were favorable and the trip back took an hour less than expected!

Supermoon Rising

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The combination of the Super Moon, the blue moon and the lunar eclipse was something a lot of people were interested in.  Sadly, we were due to have a cloudy night so none of the excitement was going to be on show.  As the sun was setting at the beginning of the evening that this was all due to happen, I was walking out of the office at the same time the moon was rising.  At this point we still had a clear sky.  I hadn’t planned anything but I did have a camera to hand so grabbed a few shots for the hell of it.

I decided to try and bracket for an HDR shot.  The twilight meant there was something closer to an even exposure between the foreground and the background than you normally manage with a moon shot but it was still a wide range.  HDR gave a bit more to play with.  Then I headed home and the clouds rolled in.

Lake Washington Sunset

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Sometimes you are just in the wrong place when the conditions are right.  We were driving across the floating bridge that takes SR520 between Seattle and Bellevue one evening.  The sun was going down and the sky to the north was pink.  The water of Lake Washington was smooth and was reflecting the sky beautifully.  We were in a car doing 60mph so there was nothing to be done about it.  Once across the bridge, I avoided the freeway and took Lake Washington Blvd towards home.  It runs alongside the lake and, while a slower road, it is a shorter distance and a more pleasant drive.

As we got alongside the water, the sky was still looking rather impressive.  The pink to the north had faded but the sky to the west still looked great.  There is a park along the shoreline and I zipped in there to see if I could find a parking spot.  Sure enough, someone had just left so I hopped out and took a few shots before the whole thing was done.  The orange in the sky towards downtown Seattle was very intense and it all looked great.  I guess I got a second bite of the apple.

The Sun is Setting! Too Late…

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The Thai delivery flight I wrote about in this post went out in lovely light.  It was due to be followed by a Dreamlifter flight to Nagoya.  That is a long leg so means a heavy jet which should use a good amount of the runway.  The scheduled departure time meant it should be just before sundown.  They didn’t start on time, though, and the light was beginning to fade.  A bit of cloud on the horizon meant that sunset was going to be okay but the light was going to go before that.  Meanwhile, once the jet called up, they advised the tower that they needed to burn down a bit of fuel to get to the required takeoff weight.  Great, not what was needed!

By the time they were ready to go, the light was gone.  However, I had waited long enough so I figured I wasn’t giving up now (although I was now getting pretty cold!).  The ISO was being ramped up rapidly as I had to keep assessing the conditions while I waited and it got steadily darker.  Finally, they called for departure and lined up.  Looking up the runway over the ridge, I could see the jet approaching.  Something interesting was making the plane look very squashed!  Once it got over the ridge, they rotated and got airborne very close to me.  Everything was very flat but at least it was something different to shoot.

Sunset on the Mountain Tops

The view from our hotel in Whistler towards the mountains was really pretty but never more so than when the sun was setting.  A couple of evenings I thought I should get a shot but was either elsewhere or too slow.  I did manage to get out there one time though, although I was still a little late.  The shadows were creeping up the lower slopes of the mountains but I still had the nice color on the summits.  The warm, evening light was really appealing and mountains look good at the best of times so this was a great scene to see.

Departing the Bay at Sundown

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This post may seem a bit symbolic but it is a bit of a cheat.  I flew out of SFO heading up to Seattle to go to my new place.  The flight left around sunset and, as we climbed out above the bay, I got some lovely views of the water, the city and the cloudscapes with the last light of the day.  As the sunset on my time there, it was rather appropriate.  (The reason it is a cheat is that I came back a few days later and left again by car.  That wasn’t so dramatic so I shall stick with this version instead.)

Sunset on Big Island

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Gratuitous sunset shots are not usually my thing.  However, where we were staying on Big Island provided a great place to watch the sun go down.  It was easy to have the sun go down in line with a little headland by the beach so why wouldn’t I do that?  I watched a couple of the sunsets from there.  The sky was better for one of them but there wasn’t a lot of high level cloud to really light up.

It’s interesting to see how many people that came out for the sunset disappeared right after the sun went down.  They missed some of the more lovely sky colors that resulted as the sun illuminated the clouds from below once it had passed beyond the horizon.  A little patience is worthwhile, although it doesn’t seem like such a sacrifice for a photo when you are standing by a tropical beach.