Solstice Photos

The summer solstice occurred last Saturday, and I set a little project for myself — to take a picture of sunrise and one of sunset. Now, the way things are around here, I can't see the sun directly rising or setting (to my eternal disappointment), but I checked online to see the times for my area. It would rise at 5:12 and set at 20:54 (8:54). So, I set myself up at both of those times and took some pictures.

I seemed to be on a bit of a fool's errand because it's been almost nothing but cloud here, but even so, I was determined to take photos at those times regardless. Somewhat serendipitously, I experienced an marvellous sunrise and an acceptable sunset.

Of course, you realize that one sees the light from the sun both before it comes up and after it goes down. The sky was really lit in the morning photos.

In all photos except for the one below, I used HDR to blend two pics — one for the land and one for the sky. Aside from not being an HDR, the one below is also the only hand-held photo, and it is really a stitch of two photos — or more like 1.5 after cropping.

After the above shots, I moved to the other side of the road that is on the left and took a photo of the trail. It's an all purpose trail used by cyclists and pedestrians in fair weather and snowmobiles and pedestrians in winter.

All of the above photos are a fair representation of the way I remember seeing the sky that morning. In the following sunset shots, the sky was not as dark as it appears in the photos, but it is pretty well the way that it came out of my underexposed shots before blending two photos for sky and land (or water).

Notice some silhouettes of Canada Geese above. They are a main reason why I chose that spot to set up my tripod. Visible are several adults and a couple of goslings' heads.  Then I moved the tripod to a spot and an angle where I could catch a few clouds.

So, that was the project that I set for myself. And I don't think I even had a daytime time after that early morning.