Grand Crescent Moon Sunset

A view of the setting crescent moon in the sunset taken just east of the Very Large Array (radio telescope) in Socorro County, New Mexico.

Taken with a 300 mm F4 to emphasize how large the moon looked setting. The next night was too late to get this shot as the moon's descent to the horizon was still well above the final fading sunset colors. It reminded me of how Ansel stressed when you see something really special don't wait to go back and get the photo no matter how inconvenient, there's no guarantee you will get a second chance (like his moonrise photo we all know and love).




And here is an image of the crescent moon in the sunset the following evening in a wider more landscape oriented view at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge:

More Pawnee Pontificating

The same night I took the sunset photo in my last post I had a lot of fun capturing the scene in a myriad of ways for practice at trying different photography techniques. In that spirit of trying to render one scene in a variety of ways I give you another angle at the same pond, and this one is an HDR (3 frames, not pseudo) take:

Hugged by a Sunset



And here is a long-time exposure (about 3.5 minutes) of Venus setting in the early night sky over the pond (not an HDR, very little post-processing):


The Disappearance of Venus

Pawnee Pond Pondering

The incredible sunset we had in Colorado Friday night seen here from a small pond in Pawnee National Grassland. No filters were used save a neutral density grad, and besides denoise and a slight levels adjustment I used very little post-processing. Shown both right side up and vertically flipped/upside down, can you tell which way is up?

Snow Goose Grace

Here are a couple of views of white morph Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens) taken at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge show off the inherent grace and beauty of this species.

One cool ID factoid to know in order to tell the very similar Snow Geese and Ross's Geese apart is the distinctive black patch on bill edges, the "grinning patch" or "smile" unique to the Snow Geese. The black lipstick-like grin patches are fairly easy to see on these captures. Also Ross's Geese have much smaller/stubbier triangular bills

A Slightly Different Sunset Pillar

A Slightly Different Sunset Pillar, originally uploaded by Fort Photo.

View 'A Slightly Different Sunset Pillar' Large On Black

Clepsydra Geyser serves here as a sunset pillar, helping paint this ethereal scene. What intrigues me the most is the lighter area at the base of the steam pillar, I didn't use flash and was the only one taking photos. I have no idea why it looks illuminated, spooky!

From the National Park Service:

This nearly constant performer splashes from several vents and its steam can be seen throughout the Lower Geyser Basin. Its name is Greek for water clock, and was given because the geyser used to erupt regularly every three minutes. Since the 1959 Hebgen earthquake, however, Clepsydra erupts almost without pause. Sometimes it quits during Fountain's eruption.

Night Heron Braking into Grace

This has a certain almost Eastern aesthetic to it that I enjoy, hope you do too.

Night Heron Braking into Grace, originally uploaded by Fort Photo.