Approaching The Solstice

The Winter Solstice is on December 21, six weeks away. Today, Saturday, is the day before we shift back to Pacific Standard Time. Tomorrow, we set our clocks back, essentially gaining a free hour of sleep. Until tomorrow, getting out before sunrise would be considered a hardship, but today, I'm well rested and watching the sunrise, ready for action. 

There's an old saying: "Red skies in morning, Sailors take warning. Red skies at night, Sailor's delight." Today's forecast calls for dry conditions, and I suspect the atmospheric moisture allowed the red wavelengths to pass through, tinting the skies pink. Being a late riser, I seldom see the change in morning colors, so I was totally enchanted by this visual change in palette. Since I normally leave my white balance setting at "Cloudy", the photos I took had a definite tint. Not warm, as you might expect, but more of a pastel nature. These three photos were not color corrected, but the exposure was adjusted to give a more pleasing image.

The pink, shadowless lighting of dawn is less noticeable to the eye, but the camera records the colors with a high degree of accuracy. The world is truly pink at this time of the morning, but the objective recording of the digital camera shows the colors as they really are.

Looking back at the images, I find the pink tint a little unnatural. Perhaps this is because it doesn't square with the warmth we all associate with sunset. I suspect that the the difference in tint can be attributed to the amount of moisture in the air, most of which would probably burn off during the warmth provided by a day full of sunlight. I'm sure the difference could be explained scientifically, but for now, I just remember what I saw, and how the photos eventually turned out.

The Shoe Mystery Solved?

Sunrise comes later in October. This photo, taken at 7:28 (just 12 minutes after sunrise) reflects the warmth inherent in the early morning light, diffused from the morning clouds, and from a direction closely aligned with the lens axis. I gives a different take on the normal "safety yellow" reflecting strips nailed to this telephone pole. I suspect they were installed by the adjacent homeowner who probably uses them to help him back his car into his garage. 

I was using the 50mm F 2.0 Fuji WR lens on my usual X-E1 body. As is always the case, the lens you need isn't always the lens on your camera, and since I have not abandoned my manual focus pilgrimage, I won't carry a zoom lens. This street shot allowed me to get as close to the reflectors as I wished, so any lens would have done. But even a short telephoto lens will "enlarge" the background, for lack of a better description, and gives the foreground a much better chance of capturing the viewer's attention. The out of focus background has a very creamy appearance, which adds to the implied softness of the light just after dawn. 

I managed to make another photograph my favorite dog "house", but since I was carrying a telephoto lens, I needed to cross the street to get the shot. Normally, I'm standing right in front of the window, doing everything I could to minimize the keyhole effect of shooting at an up angle.

If you look closely, you can see the curved region which is a reflection of the roofline of the house behind me. By shooting from across the street, I actually reduced the amount of glare on the lower portion of the window, and thus protecting our favorite beagle from those blue sky reflections that decreased the contrast in my earlier photos.

I think I know why shoes occasionally appear on my walks. They may be put there for homeless people to take. That makes sense, seeing this is San Francisco.