Sunrise over Mt. Olympus

That Golden Glow

I’ve spent many an hour waiting for the sun to either rise or set.  Looking toward it or away from it, the light skimming almost tangent to the earth can be amazing.

I caught these morning photos a couple of weekends ago when I was down in Arches National Park.  When camping, I’m usually up at the first sign of daylight, before the sun has a chance to break over the horizon.  I had the campfire burning, second cup of coffee in hand, when I took these pictures right from the Devil’s Garden Campground.

See more Golden Glow shots at:

Arches and Alta

I got these shots this morning before the first session of the day.

And here’s the modern-day technology shots of Arches from last weekend.

Sunrise, Sunset..

The theme for this week's "Thematic Photographic" is just what the title says.

As some of you know, we are on spring break right now, and for the first time in several years, I'm actually out of town on vacation*. I came down to Phoenix to visit some friends that used to live in my neighborhood. They actually live in Chandler, which is a suburb of Phoenix, and right on the boarder of the Gila River Indian Community,which means that the only development on the other side of their property wall is the Gila River Casino. Without the city lights, you can see the stars quite well at night, and since most of the land south of them is undeveloped, there is often a nice breeze coming through their yard, and a lot of birds flying around. Yeah, they get e occasional wind storm during the monsoon season (late summer, early fall) but right now it's perfect.

Anyway, the weather here is beautiful, beginning of. ay and the afternoon highs are right around 85F. I took this picture at sunset while sitting on their back patio. I really liked the way the light was hitting the palm trees, and then realized it would be perfect for this week's theme.

 

*P.S. - I know I don't usually post when I'm on vacation, because of people who might take advantage of my house being vacant, but since I now have a roommate, those of you reading this that may be so inclined should be aware that the house is not vacant. Sorry to ruin your fun.

Another great sunrise and kicking some pyramid butt…

Tuesday was the kickoff assembly for the big PTSA fundraiser at the school.  I was invited to pick three of my students and join in a competition to get the energy going.

We ended up tying, the opposing team winning two out of the three student competitions.  The final competition had the two teacher-team-captains building a pyramid out of plastic cups.  We won the final challenge, ending the games in a tie.

This morning I got to school earlier than usual, which was a good thing considering the sunrise.  Fortunately I had my wider-angle manual lens with me and got these pictures:

All in all a good week.

Lambs Canyon

I got to school the other day and the sunrise was phenomenal.  I got this picture, and a few others, but unfortunately I couldn’t get as good a picture of it as I wanted to.

I’ve found that it is best to use a manual lens with my camera set to manual for those kinds of pictures.  On automatic it goes for the average lighting, which usually washes out the sunset.  The only manual lens I carry around with me is the telephoto lens, so I wasn’t able to get the whole sunrise into the frame. 

Which got me to thinking; “Hmm, I have a manual lens on my old 35mm camera sitting on the shelf in the dining room.  I should stick that in the camera case for these kinds of shots.”

So I did.  And Sunday I went up Lambs Canyon, from my house it’s about 11 miles east on I-80, to do some comparison shots with the auto lens and the manual lens.  I resized and added the caption to the pictures, but other than that they are completely unedited.

The old, manual lens is not necessarily better for everyday shots, but I’m still going to pack it around all the time for any special light I want to capture.  There are no comparison shots for the ones in the gallery below, but as you’ll see, there are some that give a great effect because I could play with the light. (Those too were sized and copyrighted, but are otherwise untouched).

		Lambs Canyon VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL