28 November, 2011
As promised earlier, more images of this morning’s dawn on the croft. It was definitely one of the most spectacular dawns we’ve had in the past seven years or so although the sunrise proper was flat and grey.
Capturing the moment before the sun rose behind Dunnideer and Bennachie was a little tricky as the temperature was fractionally above freezing and the wind speed was around 25-30mph.
I overcame the shaking of my thoroughly chilled fingers and the buffeting of the wind by wrapping the camera in my woolly hat and wedging it between the stones of a drystone dyke.
I suspect I looked a little strange crouching down to look through the dyke as several passing cars slowed as I was working and on least one occasion I glimpsed the passenger pointing me out to the driver. They should have looked out the rear window instead!
As always, click through for larger versions of the images.
Beautiful
Those are so fantastically improbable it looks like the Sun knows you are waiting for it and has decide to put on a show.
The colours are very close to what we saw this morning. They’re not doctored in Photoshop—have a look at the blues in the third photo from the bottom. All I’ve done with the earlier photos is frame specific elements of the image to narrow the angle of view and force certain colours/patterns to dominate.
As the sun neared the horizon, the colours changed to pastels for a couple of minutes and then everything went to our normal daytime grey. There was no visible sunrise because the sun went from shining on the underside of the clouds to rising behind them.
We get some amazing sunrises and sunsets, but you have to be on site day in, day out and fast on your feet to capture them. I’m both!
In some shots those clouds look like waves – the sea upside-down and on fire. That sight is some compensation for having to get up so early in the morning…
The advantage of this time of year, and at the same point in spring, is that the sunsets coincide with feeding time for the livestock, give or take 30 minutes, making it easy to fit photography around the chores. It’s more difficult at other times of year.
Those are some stunning photos. Like paintings, or dreams.
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed them.
I just commented on your other sunrise photo – this sky is spectacular! Pretty much lets the world know that man will never be able to outshine (no pun intended!) mother natures incredible beauty. Fantastic one to have for the album, no doubt.
We get a fair number of dawns and dusks like these, although this is one of the best. They’re fairly easy to capture. Capturing the actual moment of sunrise, especially as the light washes over our piece of the landscape, is much, much more challenging.