Yesterday, did I mention signs of spring? Here’s another one. The sun officially clocked returning to the front of the house, after four months of being hidden behind the hill every morning. I depicted this, with a different shot, back in February 2014, (Feb 21st in that case), but it’s a notable day every year.
I feel I’ve recently been in a bit of a low point on this blog, creativity-wise. And I’m also spending most of the time at the moment sat at home. Tried to make an effort with this one, and bearing in mind that all this is being done on cheap and standard gear, this is probably as good an effort at this shot as I could manage. Let’s see the flare as a deliberate creative shot, but it’s a shame the sun ends up blurred. The high valley walls mean it disappears at least an hour before the scheduled sunset time; waiting for the moment of its transition gave me something to do this afternoon that wasn’t work, at least. The contrail and birds were freebies.
Sometimes you just see a shot, and have about five seconds and one chance to capture it before it goes away (in this case because the guy simply stepped back inside through the window to his left). They don’t always come out as hoped, but this one did. Played for and got.
This street runs through the lower end of the University of Bergen campus, and leads from the hotel I always stay in here to the pub I usually drink in — so I walk along it a lot. I pick it as today’s shot not because of its scenic qualities as such, but merely for the demonstration of how high the sun remains in the sky at this time of night. At over 60ºN and in the week leading up to the summer solstice, it just doesn’t get very dark here right now. Which is nice, but I need some sleep, so I’m hoping I have good blinds on the window.
I wanted to visit the tropical north of Queensland anyway, and Cooktown, and the experience of driving through the emptiness of the region, made it worth doing: but there was a reason to do it at this specific period of time, and here it is. I did not manage to penetrate the zone of totality due to not having a 4WD vehicle, so this picture is taken from Laura, a one-horse town west of Cooktown, where the tarmac ends — this was the closest I could get, but we are not at full coverage as you can see. However, in some ways, just as well I stopped where I did because I ended up watching it in the company of a group of Russians who happened to have a pair of solar viewing glasses that could then be used as a filter on the camera, as well as for our eyes. Without them it would not have been possible to capture it.
Anyway, despite all that, and the time and effort it took to see what was really just a few minutes of dimness, I’m glad I did. And there probably won’t be many other non-astronomer pictures of this event. I doubt many people in the world saw this. Its path certainly didn’t cross anywhere particularly populated, just the remote north of Australia and some islands in the South Pacific. Even round here there seemed general ignorance that it was happening: I think largely because they had a total eclipse last November, and this was ‘just’ an annular one, where the moon is at its furthest point from Earth so doesn’t cover the sun’s disk entirely. Nevertheless, let’s not be blasé about it: do you realise how rare eclipses might be, I mean, in the universe? The fact that the Sun and Moon are virtually the same apparent size when viewed from the Earth is really a remarkable coincidence. It’s possible we’re the only planet for thousands of light years in any direction that experiences them, so let’s treasure them.
This is one of those where I didn’t seek much photographic quality out of the daily pic, and instead just documented an interesting event. Well, I mean, it’s an everyday event, but look how low in the sky this sun is. And I’ve applied no filters or digital manipulation to this shot. This is really what high noon looks like in Bergen in late-November.
Taken just past the halfway point of a walk undertaken from my parents’ house this afternoon. The leaves are well and truly turning here and I did get a couple of good photos of autumn colours but this one I like because it seems less a picture of foliage, and more a picture of a moment, a burst of light captured by the water and trapped there.
Hebden Bridge, and the British summer, and I have had a bit of a falling out over the last few weeks. It kind of started around June 21st and has gone on from there. Today, we all started toward a reconciliation of sorts. Let’s hope it continues.
The last time the sun was seen in these parts was at some point on Wednesday 20th June, two weeks ago. It reappeared today for a couple of hours in the evening, creating a paroxysm of photography in this blogger, even if the shots were largely mundane, it was just a relief to see the light. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. As I post we’ve just been hit by a pretty intense storm. You gotta love it.
This photo encapsulates the weather we had today: wind, rain and sun. Taken from inside the (heated) waiting room on platform 2 of Todmorden railway station.
Another very strong candidate for photo of the day is on my Facebook page, by the way. Doubtless it will make its way into the next ‘best of the rest’ collection.
Being 42 