large Box Elder standing at the water’s edge blew over during Tropical Storm Irene. It had outgrown its roots. Like an enormous square sail of centuries past, it caught the wind and pulled its own roots out of the ground. At no small cost we...
How grand! Another magnificent dawn! This makes two in as many days. In years past, I had come to expect such elaborate displays in frigid December, not in mild October. Why so early this year? Mere chance, or climate change? Or did I mi...
The day began with dramatic, almost dreamlike cloud formations above the hill beyond the pond. They are ephemeral, I’ve learned. Quickly, I reached for my camera, opened the window and started shooting. As happens so often, the first shot wa...
This early February dawn was well under way when I caught it. Only minutes earlier, when I first woke, a much larger display loomed outside my window. So fast did the formation move, that much of it was gone by the time I pulled myself together an...
woke early. I was hoping to finish an earlier post, delayed already for a week. In the quiet hour before dawn, I thought, I’ll get it done. Little did I count on this dramatic event. As I typed, the sky began to brighten. A massive...
mood of expectancy pervades this scene, evokiing the fanciful imaginings of a child’s fairly tale ...
A woke early as usual. Through the tangle of trees and brush on Smith Point, I caught hints of a bright orange glow. A forest fire to the north? The question came unbidden. I pulled on some clothes and went out. After banishing a goose family tryi...
Words can add nothing to this sublime canvas. I tried punching up the contrast in my photo editor; the result was more dramatic, but ultimately less appealing. This photo was taken at 5:56 am, on June 17th, 2012. It appears just as it ca...
This is the same scene that I photographed in May, but five weeks later. The houses nestled in the far, southeastern corner of the pond appear tiny, as if from a Monopoly game. They’ve been gently set aglow by the last, low rays of sun....
This proud, painterly procession of luminous clouds was captured on June 25, 2012, at 8:06 pm, just as the last, low rays of sun spread across the water. Only this spring have I been able to enjoy this sunset-lit scene, which changes nig...
I know, I know, July Fourth broke overcast and rainy this year, but why be literal-minded about it? This dazzling sunrise was taken just one day earlier; surely it can mark the holiday. After all, we enjoy fireworks for several days leading up to ...
fallen behind dense, dark clouds to the west, leaving the pond and distant houses in shadow, but softly illuminating the clouds above. What extravagant clouds they were! With dusty shadings of gray and blue, woven together by a delicate white lace...
“Pocket lightning” is a term I made up to describe the little flashes of lightning I saw on a recent July evening, each peeping briefly through its own small opening in a dark, dense, cloud cover exotically colored rust and midnight bl...
Regular readers will recognize this scene, appearing often in this blog as the “sunset” scene. This photo was shot about an hour earlier than the sunset photos — so “Cloudy Evening” is apt. ...
This post is titled, “Orange Dawn,” but mauve and peach share the honors; it could equally have been called, “Tricolor Dawn.” Richly colored dawns like this usually occur in the frigid period from late November to...
These lovely sunset photos were submitted by readers in response to my sunRISE post, Orange Dawn. Sunrise or sunset, I won’t quibble; they’re beautiful photos and deserve some recognition. ...
I know it’s a trivial name for so majestic a spectacle, but I couldn’t think of any other distinguishing feature by which to describe it. As I’ve noted before, it’s unusual for so many gorgeous dawns to occur this...
Was the sky really this blue? A bit of blue was indeed present, but the camera pumped it up due to my error. I forgot to reset the color bias of the camera for the scene. (On digital cameras that setting, of course, is called “white balance....
October and November have so far favored us with no fewer than five splendid dawn displays, all dramatically different, each uniquely beautiful. I’ve posted links to the other four below. This photo was taken on November 15, 2012, ...
The Winter Solstice is an instant in time, marking the shortest day and longest night of the year. It is the day, also, when the noontime sun is at its lowest. The juncture of these two astronomical events is due to the axial tilt of the...
The photo was taken at 7:32 am on January 1, 2013. One minute later, the sun broke cleanly above the trees, the colors faded and the effect was gone. Astronomical sunrise took place at 7:20 am. Click the image to view it full screen, and...
This makes two magnificent dawns in the first week of January, alone. In years past, we came to expect these celestial extravaganzas in December. Perhaps this past December was not cold enough. When I first spotted this great b...
This was the third spectacular dawn in just the first week of the new year — making up, no doubt, for a lackluster December, the traditional month for celestial fire (see the links below). I raised the shade at 7:00 am. The sky was...
Wispy and surreal, they reminded me of northern lights, or aurora borealis. In reality, they were nothing more than fuzzy, distant clouds set ablaze by the still-hidden sun — a familiar predawn occurrence. Sadly, before t...
This is not a spectacular dawn, as our winter dawns go, but it is richly textured and elegant. The smaller photo, below, was the camera’s default interpretation, an average reading of the light. In the featured photo, I r...
Dawn skies are infinitely varied and variable. The most spectacular draw me into whimsical flights of fancy, for which I beg the reader’s indulgence. Here I imagined these streaks in the sky were meteor smoke trails like those wide...
I offer sincere apologies to my readers for my absence these many months. I’m deeply touched by those who called or...
The fire gods were busy! No fewer than twenty exquisite dawn skies graced the pond this past fall and winter, a new cold-...
In this fanciful, dawn display, we see high-altitude clouds lit up brightly by a sun still hidden from our view. The intense colors result from the shallow angle at which the sun’s light hits the clouds. These celestial delights se...
