Sunset

After a side trip for a few errands, I returned to Mallard Lake for another look . . . specifically looking for a sunset. Overall I was pleased with the images I collected with my handy pocket camera inside the iPhone. It will never replace the Nikon but it does give me an alternative that will be with me pretty much everywhere.

Wintry Sunset

Every direction but one had a cold cast to the eye. Only looking into the sun kissed the scene with color.

Nightfall at Blackwell

Show up at a forest preserve in the so-called Golden Hour, that hour before sunset, and the automatic timer will let you know when it is time to go. Here are a couple of so-long Blackwell shots from the recent visit.

Meacham Grove

A sunny afternoon forty-eight hours after the blizzard brought out the sun. A quick trip to Meacham Grove right here in Bloomingdale gave me these images of the aftermath of the storm.

Gotta love that sunset when you have been under a blizzard!

Photogene

My iPad has an interesting new app called Photogene. It has the capability of several simple adjustments, which I will not likely use much as I rely on Photoshop. One think I like, though, is the quick and easy Posterize filter which I find is much to my liking. And it involves a single click. On the laptop I dropped two photos (which have already been posted here) into my Dropbox holding spot on the desktop. Immediately, I looked on the Dropbox on the iPad, loaded the pic into the app and posterized it. Sent it back to the Dropbox, pulled it up on the laptop, and was ready to post it here. Love the speed and smooth sailing in crossing from one to the other! Here are two winter sunset posters.

Gloaming

No one uses the term 'gloaming' any more, but the light thickened as the sun sank to the southwest. Clouds and vapor trails took on touches of color and the darkness signaled the end of the sunny day in winter. Night followed.

Electrified Sunset

Two more views of the recent sunset at Pratt's Wayne Woods. Seen from near the CN railroad track that runs through the preserve, the power of the struts and the barbed wire contrasts well with the color in the sky.

Winter in Wayne

The latest in a series of photo visits to Wayne, where I shot a horse show and a fox hunt in 2010, were to see a pretty sunset at Pratt's Wayne Woods Forest Preserve. The sky had color, the clouds were bright, and here we see a power line structure looking tall against the blue sky.

Geese at Sunset

My final two sunset pictures at West Branch look quiet, but the geese were not as much at rest as they look here. One and then another honked and honked for a good ten minutes, the sound dying with the light.

After I had turned away from the water and headed toward the car, the wonder of a set of branches etched into the darkening sky became the last image of the shoot.

Thin Line of Color

As the sun continued to set at West Branch, darkness set in and the sunset line condensed to a thin stripe of color. The impression was one that perhaps the sunlight, such as it was, was shrinking in tightly to preserve a bit of the warmth. Coldly impressive.

Light Thickens

As a former English teacher, I was well-known for loving Shakespeare, whether in book form or live on stage. He was a master of great writing, of course, with towering stories of powerful heroes and villains. But he was also a master of that perfect image, that one detail that really works.

I watched the wintry night falling over the horizon and I thought of one of the greatest tragedies, MACBETH: Light thickens, and the crow makes way to the rooky wood. Never saw a crow that evening, but the scene was set perfectly for one. Light does indeed "thicken."

Sunset

Fall color shots generally take place at the so-called Golden Hour, the time when the setting sun drops far enough to send long attractive shadows across the landscape. The end of the Golden Hour, of course, would be sunset. What more could we ask of a Grand Finale?

Fabyan Windmill

Two more shots from along the Fox River in May. One is of the fabled Fabyan Windmill, standing along the Fox for nearly a century now. The other is a dramatic shot of a tree highlighted by the sunset at Fox River Bluffs Forest Preserve.

Elgin Twilight

After a near-sunset shot across the Fox River, I hopped into the car and drove up to Elgin to see the sun set and the lights begin to twinkle in Elgin. Here we see the sun's reflection in the river and, then in Elgin, a ramp into the river just north of the riverboat casino.

The most impressive twilit building in Elgin will be seen in the next post.

One More Sunset

One more sunset remained before the flight home on Friday. Power lines help frame the final rays of the sun in one picture; in the other, the dark of the evening closes in on some bright desert flowers.

Getting Late

Light thickens and the crow makes its way to the rooky wood . . . No, wait, that was in Scotland. Here I saw no crows, but I did see a lizard.

Sunset Panorama

Sunset on the desert gave me the panorama opportunity that I had been looking forward to and planning for. Here are a pair of views of nightfall in Phoenix.

Night Falls

Night falls quickly on the desert, as I learned a year ago, but taking the time to find the Desert Botanic Garden, getting to the garden two hours before listed sunset time, and being ready to go as light thickened -- all these preparations set me up for some sunset fun on the desert, all about 16 hours after I left the house in wintry darkness.
These images will be followed by more in the next post.

Golden Sunset

Bright golden sun arcing through the trees gave a nice closing image to the visit to Army Trail Nature Center. The urge to experiment then wrapped up the sunset in a polar coordinate that yielded a flaming ball.

Sunset on the Desert

On my itinerary for the Spring Training Trip to Mesa, I had included an effort to shoot some sunsets in the desert area. Since two of the three evenings would be devoted to baseball games, I set out for some pictures before dinner, with what I thought was plenty of time to locate an angle and a vista to feature in the sunset pictures.

While I am quite pleased with several of the images I collected, it was a wild but short chase. For one thing, the maps had indicated to me the location of various mountains right in the area, ones that had streets and development built right up to the edges. After I left the motel, I headed west to get out of Tempe and found myself behind one of the mountains. Driving a bit quickly to clear the obstacle I found that in my non-scientific opinion, light falls quite quickly on the desert. Perhaps it is the city boy in me seeing a difference, and perhaps the trip being within a week of the equinox had a effect, but it was a palpable difference to me.

Difference enough to generate this poem:

NIGHT FALLS QUICKLY

Night falls quickly on the desert with a perceptible though silent thud,
No lingering sunset, no streaks of tardily-departing light;
Almost as if someone had flipped a light switch and set it to
Off.