Painted Sky

Taken Twelve Seconds Apart

I took these on April 1 to show how little amount of time you have when taking morning photos or evening photos.  Same is true in the evening "Golden Hour".  If you watch the sun at these times you can almost see the time lapse with your own eyes. 

 

Yes, there is a difference in the zoom but that isn't important here.  It's the glow that was showing from behind the tree line as the sun got closer to breaking the horizon.  From this advantage point it may have already done that in the top picture and I am really assuming that it may have in the second shot, just 12 seconds later.  The other give away is the darkness of the sky to the right of the where the glow would be in the first picture.  The sun will arch up and to the south as it makes its way to the west to set before beginning another day. 

 

Today, and for the next four or five days, rain is in the forecast.  It's Spring and Winter has gone bye-bye for this year here in southern Ohio.  We hope.

 

 

 

 

 

Good Morning Mr. Sun

Nothing else to say.

A Couple of Sunrise Shots

Been away from doing much on the Blog of late.  Bought a book on Lightroom 5 but haven't had much of an opportunity to take any shots then on day a fellow Focus Photo Club member put up a great picture of a road in the early morning where he took a great shot of the sun light coming through the trees.  This inspired me to take some photos. 


I almost lost this one with a blown out sky but was able to salvage it.  There's a little HDR thrown in and then edited to un-sharpen the effect.

 

 

 

This one looks like an edited on of the first but the sun would be in there.  It was taken just a few minutes earlier.  The sun rises very quickly so you have to be ready.  It would help to have two cameras set up differently, like if you wanted ND filters on like I did but things just change too fast.  So, I took an already pretty good silhouette picture and amped it up a tad.  I call this Metallic Sunrise.

 

Bright Light

We've had clouds for the past week or so. Mostly from the storms that went north of us across Lake Erie and on up into New England.

Well, yesterday we got a pleasant surprise with some bright sun around 7:30 AM. Just thought I would take a shot and see what I got. It put me on notice......my lens needed cleaned. I also got some natural light flares. Did a tad bit of burning of the image but all in all this is right out of the camera.

Starting tomorrow the weather goes the other way, clouds dropping some rain then freezing rain and then snow turning back to freezing rain etc etc. Forecast, we will either fall into the 2 -4" range or the 6 - 8" range. North of here is upwards of 10 inches. Come on 2 - 4.

Click to enlarge:

In Just Six Days......Movement

These pictures are more significant in showing what my monthly blog pictures were meant to show, not only the change in the scenery but the movement of the sun on the horizon as it comes up in the morning. The first picture was taken on the Oct. 1st and the second one was taken the sixth. The pictures are take from the same window in the house and I always use the tower as my centering point. The sun has definitely drifted to the south.....boo hoo. Need to figure a way to put an anchor on it to keep it from drifting anymore and allowing winter to show it's ugliness.

Missed by a Day

This was yesterday afternoon. Sun coming from the west with the storm clouds off to the east. There was no reason to take the monthly photo in the morning because you couldn't see the sun's transition from above the eastern line (the tower in the picture) to the southern hemisphere. As you can see though, the season here in the mid-west has changed. High was 51 and normal is 70 degrees. Possible frost this morning in low lying areas, we didn't get any.

This was shot this morning. What a difference a few hours makes. Yesterday was like I said, really cool if not cold because of a strong wind all day and today is great....cool again with wind but sunshine.....yea! Looking back in the blog you can see how the sun has changed positions in the sky and how the scenery has changed in appearance. We are early for our fall foliage by at least a week if not two.

Mid August Posting

As you can see, the sun light is still coming from the left side of the picture but it is slowly drifting back to the right. Another month or so and I will be looking at it straight on.

I took this on the 15th but am just getting around to posting it. We've had roofers here along with downspout and gutter installers and facia and siding people for the last few days. Hail damage at the end of May an just now getting it done.

Today the builder of our home had a contractor in to dig along the footer to tie into the curtain drain. They then made what is called a daylight drain. This is to relieve my sump pump from its continious running when we get days of wet weather, like in the spring and sometimes in the fall. They also have to replace or repair the crock (sump pit) as it fills with water from below the curtain drain connection. Sometimes this connection never does put water into the pit but the pump runs almost continously. Once the pipe feeds the pits it is 24/7 with no shutting down. Even my backup system is strained. I took pictures today, will try to post tomorrow. Now they have lots of yard work to do to get me back to normal.

June Monthly Posting

Wow, here we are almost halfway through the year and a little over halfway through my not so scientific look at how the sun and lighting goes from inside one window of my house. This is one of the few sunny days we have had on the first of the month. At least that is the way it seems. I am tempted to look back but I'm not going to until my little project is over. I do believe the harsh winter and never ending, at least it looked that way, has made for the thought of no sunny days. Actually during the winter months there were lots of sunny days, just cold and believe it or not.....snow. I didn't know blue sky could drop snow flakes.

June 1, 2011....@ 7:30 AM. Yesterday was August weather but today will be less humid and only 84.

Morning Glow

We were starting our first day of the three day community garage day sale. Up at 6, eat, outside around 7 to start getting everything that needed or should be outside placed before the opening bell at 8. It was suppose to be a clear day and it did turn out that way. Not a cloud in the sky so I decided to take some early morning shots.

Both were taken at 6:20 AM. The camera is the Canon Rebel EOS XTi. The lens is my one and only, at least for now, Tamron 18-270mm Di II VCD.

The first picture has the following specs; 3888 x 2592 pixels, 72 dpi resolution, f-stop 5.6, ISO 1600, focal length of 32mm and a shutter speed of 1/2 sec. Size is 1.17 MB.

The next picture is 2710 x 1368 pixels, 72 dpi, f-stop 5.6, ISO 1600, focal length 32mm and shutter speed 1/2 sec. Size 570 KB.

I have played with the color intensity a bit and plan on trying some Lightroom effects. Afterall, this is my learning curve.

Halos and the sun

Just some halo effects of the sun as it came from behind a cloud.  This was taken in RGB Standard color.  ISO was 100 with camera in full manual.  Partial metering witht the f-stop at F20 and shutter at 1/200.  The image became a b/w or sepia looking due to the intensity of the sun.  I believe it was taking at approx. 9:30 AM.  Using the program GIMP, I unmasked the picture, then sharpened it and then played around with lots of effects until I came upon the lens menu.  The bright spot on the lower left corner started in the upper left.  There is a couple of cross hairs that you move infinitely until you get what you want.  I had an earlier posting of the sun coming up with a bright white spot in the clouds, that one was not touched up. I still believe that it was a reflection of some sort as the sun had not crested the horizon.

Morning Pictures and the Help of a Magazine.

Around 7:30 AM yesterday I saw the buzzard soaring for its breakfast.  I looked peaceful as it glided through the calm morning air.

My camera info for the shot is as follows:

Canon EOS Rebel Xti

Lense is a Tamaron 18-270 mm Di II set at 1/100 shutter speed, 6.3 aperture, Metering Mode is Evaluative Metering and an ISO of 100.  The focal length was 270, White Balance was set to Auto and AF Mode was A1 Focus.

The second picture is a little trickery I suppose.  From my angle and what was truly on the horizon there appears to be a body of water on the otherside of the tall tree in the foreground.  At first I thought I had picked up a fog hanging over I-675 which is below that line between the tree and the what appears to be a land line in the distance.  I actuality that is sky and the land line is a line of clouds.

Camera settings for this shot are as follows;

Same camera and lense.  1/50 shutter speed, 5.6 aperture, Metering Mode is Partial and Exposure Compensation is -1.  Focal Length is 184, ISO is 100 and the White Balance is set to Daylight and AF Mode was again in A1 Focus.

I picked up a great magazine on digital photography.  At least that is the section I got it from at the book store.  In reality it is more of a book.  Very few adds.  It's called the "The Ultimate Guide To Digital Photography" Fully Udated 3rd Edition.  It's actually a British magazine and I t hink it is great.  Easy to read and very informative, especially for a novice.