Category Archives: Sunrise

Good morning sunshine

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I have looked forward to these nice Saturday sunrises for a long time. This morning I woke up early and headed out with my camera to see what I could see. Actually, I had a couple of targets in mind. We passed this fencepost last night on a way to a potluck dinner at a friend’s place, and I made a mental note of it.

My boys and I decided to go back during the afternoon light to try to get a sharper version, with some more direct light, but there’s nothing like that early morning sun. The warmth on one side of the hat and truck in the top photo can’t be duplicated when the spring sun is directly overhead. I continue to be amazed at how many cool photos are sitting by the side of the road, many within city limits!

That local landmark to which I referred over the weekend

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It may not be well known to Bismarck-Mandan folks, but I’m sure anyone from Almont and much of New Salem know about the old Occident Elevator. I previously featured this elevator in my “Occident by Accident” post, after I stumbled upon it while out snooping in the truck. I love those full day photo excursions, and I hope to take another one soon!

The location of this elevator, for those of you with a GPS, is 46°50.429″ minutes North by 101°30.460″ West. Here are some other photos from the morning, featuring one of the reddest skies I’ve seen.

Here we can see the transition from the red horizon to the bluish sky above. The colors of these sunrises and sunsets can fall off pretty quickly, depending on the sun’s position relative to the horizon.

Not only was it red, the clouds were pretty dramatic as well. The best sunrise in the world is one where the clouds are doing all kinds of exciting things. This morning was exceptional.

Wow. As amazing as these clouds and colors are, somehow they lack impact without a noteworthy foreground object. The elevator pulls it off nicely.

I hadn’t planned on going out for pictures this particular morning, but I’m glad I did. I got to the location at exactly the right time, neither too early or too late. Once it was over, I pointed the truck back to the house to play with my boys. What a remarkable morning!

Sunrise on the Eve

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My wife woke me up Christmas Eve to tell me of a lovely sunrise developing. I’d fallen asleep with my contact lenses in the night before, so I was pretty well ready to roll out of bed and into the truck. I’m so blessed to have a wife who realizes my need to just get out and roam, and she was graceful in getting me out the door for a brief Christmas Eve outing. I missed the red part of the sunset, but things stayed golden for quite a while.

As I’ve mentioned before, the best sunrise, sunset, or aurora photo is one with a nice foreground. I set out southeast of town in search of that foreground, which is why much of the color got away from me. No worries, though – I found the broken down windmill in the first picture, then moved on to this intact one a little further down the road.

I soon found myself in the river bottoms, in what looked like a graveyard for forgotten cottonwood trees. It was quite a sight, especially so given the sun’s position. I poked around down there for a little bit and even considered hopping out of the truck to pound a few rounds at the gun range, but I didn’t want to be out too long.

I popped out of the other end of the bottoms onto Highway 1804 and pointed the truck home. I gave the boys at KFYR Radio a Merry Christmas phone call along the way and caught up on the latest happenings in local broadcasting, then marched through the door to hug my wife and boys. It was nice to get out and poke around, yet get home early enough to enjoy the rest of the day with family.

Sunday sunrise

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I’d hoped to catch a view of the comet McNaught that appears around sunrise, but unfortunately our horizon was obscured by clouds until it was too late and the sun drowned out any possibility of a comet sighting. That’s okay, there was a pretty neat sunrise after all. I didn’t get the luck of a parhelion event or anything, but there was a pretty good beam straight upward from the rising sun. I was out running errands before church, so I didn’t hang around to see if anything else exciting was about to happen.

Sunrise…on my tummy…

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…makes me happy…oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to kick into John Denver mode there. Yes, it must be a disorder: I was lying in a field at sunrise this morning, listening to my iPod and waiting to see what the sun would do. So much for sleeping in! Before getting down on the ground to get this angle, I was on my feet for a while. So I guess you could say I was outstanding in the field. Okay, I’ll quit the puns. Here’s the pix:

I was hoping that we’d get more of the red/purple thing that the sun has been doing the past few days, but that wasn’t the case. I believe it’s because of the clouds on the far horizon, which don’t give the sun a chance to refract or something to that effect. Not only did that strip the sunrise of its colors, but it also prolonged the time I had to shiver until the sun poked its head above the clouds. The wait was worth it, as I got quite a few neat shots. This is one of them.

There were some ups and downs to this little adventure. It seems that I can’t leave the house without something blogworthy happening, and today was no different. While I got lots of nice sunrise and pre-sunrise pictures, I also had some other trials. First, the cap for the lens I was using fell out of my pocket out in the middle of this field, and I noticed it once I’d hiked back to the truck. Being of the stubborn sort, I hoofed it back out there and actually found it within five minutes! To help, I brought the camera and lined up the picture the same way, then followed my tracks back toward the truck. Whew! Canon charges an arm and a leg for those things. Oh, one more thing:

This is what the last few photos looked like. Yuck. As it turns out, the beautiful little prime lens I was using to shoot this somehow sucked a bunch of dust into itself. I got home, looked at the pictures, and was immediately horrified. Inspection of the lens showed that yes, there was some nasty gunk on the lens…but not on the outside! Somehow it had gotten inside. That’s a mystery to me.

A lot of those other dots are caused by a dirty sensor on the camera. This is a problem unique to digital cameras, since film uses a new surface for each exposure. When you own a digital camera where you change lenses a lot, there comes a time to clean it. Sensors attract dust, and dust shows up when you point the camera at bright stuff with narrow apertures (I think this was f/22). Drat.

I just ordered a couple of different sensor cleaning kits, so it’s time to try them out. It’s never fun to stick foreign objects into a $1500 camera, but I honestly don’t trust anyone else to do it for me. I’ve always been the same way with my motorcycles, mountain bikes, and other stuff. There are too many horror stories flying around out there. So I’ll be sticking a solvent swab into my computer very soon. Hopefully I’ll do it right, or it’ll be hard to come up with more photography for the ol’ Blog!

Thursday Morning Light

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Obviously there was a fantastic spectacle last night (Thursday) with all the Aurora Borealis activity. What I didn’t tell you (yet) is that the day started out with a lightshow as well. Shown above is the sunrise from Thursday morning, an amazing display of color. A sunrise like this will really make a photographer’s day, but to have the day bookended with such a Northern Lights display will make this day stand out in history.

Just in case you wanted to see the front of the church, here ya go. Aren’t those colors in the morning sky simply amazing? The same sort of thing was happening in the sky this morning, but I didn’t get out of the house in time to catch it. Sunrises and sunsets with this type of dramatic color only happen for a few minutes, and then they’re gone.

Sunrise at the track

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So there I was…at the private motorcycle/atv track east of Bismarck this morning, when this glorious sunrise took place. These late September mornings can be brisk, and I wouldn’t have them any other way.

One other characteristic of fall in North Dakota is the elevation of the sun above the horizon. As a motorcyclist, I’m all too aware of this; it makes us even harder for the people driving cages to see. This also makes for some unique sunrises and sunsets, such as this one.