Interesting Similarity

I was at Cutler Park twice today -- for sunrise and for sunset/moonrise. The cloud formation at sunset was very similar to the one at dawn, though they occurred 13 hours apart. Here's what they looked like:

DAWN



SUNSET

Cutler Park in "Regular" Daylight

If you are a frequent viewer of Cutler Park photos on my website (Hastings Street Photography), you may be wondering what those scenes look like at some time other than dawn, in "regular" daylight. So one afternoon this summer, I went out to the Park and took pictures of some of the same scenes that appear in my photo galleries.

For example, the first thing I usually photograph is the far shore of the Charles River just as I am coming down to the water from the path. Before dawn, it looks like this:


or this:


But on a summer afternoon, it looks like this:


Here's another example. Looking directly across the river from my vantage point on the west side, at dawn the eastern side of the river looks like this:

or this:


In the summer afternoon light, however, it looks like this:


You get the idea.

Here's one more example, a wider view of the east side of the river at dawn:


And then, in the afternoon:


I'll post more of these from time to time. Or if you live in the area, you can just go see for yourself!

Ten Minutes of Awesome Sky (and Fifty Minutes More)

As I said in my previous post (see below, July 24), sometimes you get only a short window of great sunrise light; other times, however, the sunrise just keeps going and going. This morning was one of the latter kind -- the color peaked in about 10 minutes, but the interesting view lasted for almost an hour.

The color started about 5:43a, which is about 20 minutes before official sunrise. Here's how it began:


Three minutes later (5:46a) it was warming up:


And the color began to spread (5:51a):


The peak of color arrived three minutes later (5:54a), still well before official sunrise:


Then it started to fade:

5:58a



6:02a


Ten minutes later (6:13a), the clouds had pretty much all gone to gray, but interesting patterns were beginning to form:



At 6:24a, the temperature dropped a couple of degrees, and the light fog that had been floating just at the surface of the water suddenly became a thin veil of fog 10 - 20 feet high (see especially the big cloud on the right side of the image):



The fog receded quickly, but the cloud patterns kept evolving (6:40a):



Just about an hour had passed since the initial glow. A few hours later the first wave of overcast from Hurricane Irene (still over 500 miles away) filled the sky.

If you would like to see the images above in a larger size, click on the following link:

Ten Minutes of Awesome Sky

Six Minutes of Awesome Sky

This is the first of what I hope will become a continuing, if irregular, series of stories about my photo expeditions to Cutler Park, on the Charles River in Needham, Massachusetts.

Sunrises come in all different varieties -- that's why I like shooting them. Most of the time, if they're good, you get about 20 minutes worth of shooting: 10 minutes before actual sunrise to 10 minutes after. Depending on how the clouds are working, you can get nothing or a lot. I've had some of both over the past few years that I have been visiting Cutler Park at dawn. Today, it was six minutes of awesome sky.

When I woke up this morning a little before 4:00a, I could see a half moon barely visible behind clouds slowly moving across the sky, which didn't bode well for good photo opportunities when the sun rose about 5:30a. But I figured I could always return home and go back to bed if it didn't work out.

Got to Cutler about 5:00a, and the sky was overcast -- not solid, but wall-to-wall -- not good. At that point, it looked like this:



The whole sky slowly got lighter, but it was still pretty gloomy. (For those of you not interested in the technicalities, please forgive the following digression: I was at ISO 2000 and shooting mostly 1/60th at f/5.6.) The texture of the clouds was interesting, and there were occasional gaps where lighter streaks emerged, but they were far away and not in the right place for sunrise.

After fifteen minutes or so, it seemed like nothing was going to happen. At 5:18a the horizon looked like this:




So I turned and started shooting toward the southeast, where there was a little more light. A couple of minutes later, at 5:22a, I turned back toward the place where I knew the sun was supposed to be and saw this:



Whoa! Where did THAT come from?

I rapidly re-set my camera settings and started shooting: single frames; multi-frames for panoramas I would stitch together later; wide shots; tight shots; longer exposure; shorter exposure. I had to grab this, because I knew it wouldn't last long. Six minutes later, it was over. Here's how it looked:

5:23am


5:24am


5:25am


5:26am



5:27am



That was it -- all in about six minutes. While it was happening it felt like about two minutes. Then, 30 minutes later, the universe provided a grace note:




If you'd like to see the whole sequence in larger format (plus a few different views of the scene), here's a link to the gallery on my photography website, Hastings Street Photography:

Six Minutes of Awesome Sky

Enjoy!