The simpler your pleasures the happier you’ll be. Now good photography is complicated but it doesn’t get easier that stopping for a moment to appreciate the beauty of a nice sunset or sunrise. Cool picture BTW.
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THAT is a nice photo. The car was just an accent to the sunset. Gave perspective. Nice
Nice!!! Are those colours caused by smoke from California, or from the Petrochemical industry around?
The Thomas Moran painting looks like something I would expect to see in an episode of “The Joy of Painting” with Bob Ross. Happy little accidents anyone?
Thanks.
I try to include sunset photos as often as I can. Some tracks have better sight lines than others, and then there is timing, and, of course the quality of the sunset. Some are more dramatic than others.
Neither. This was shot a few years ago. The track is out near the desert, southwest of Riverside.
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So desert dust then. That can cause some spectacular sunrise/sunset colours, as seen both in the Arabian Sea and off SW Sahara.
This is from the Glass Fire burning in the Napa Wine area last sunset.
You will enjoy it in Norway in 8 days.
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Well, I have never seen a Thomas Moran in person, but I have seen a JMW Turner, and the two can be mistaken for one another. Photos will never do justice to either.
Turner’s style was rather refreshing at the time. Nobody painted like him. Moran often emulated Turner.
The sunsets both artists created have been used to research how the atmosphere used to be like, and there are watercolors of other artists of their period who were more keen on realism, who also have their works analyzed by scientists just to figure out what it was like 200 years ago.
I think a big volcano erupted in the 1800’s and Earth’s atmosphere got a really deep red tint and the great artists were able to capture the sky with tones we don’t often see today.
Nope. Bob Ross it ain’t.
You are right. Tambora in Indonesia erupted in 1815 and was the most devastating eruption in recorded history. The eruption was heard 1600 miles away and caused crop failures and famine in Central Europe.
Krakatoa, also in Indonesia was later in 1883 wasn’t a damp squib either. It put 3 cubic KILOMETRES into the earth’s atmosphere in 11.5 seconds.
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Just so California doesn’t get all the “credit” or blame, despite the national press treating “California” as = “West Coast,” approximately HALF the acreage burned so far has been in Oregon & Washington (and much of that acreage more heavily forested). CA has burned about 2,600 sq. miles so far as compared to Oregon at about 1,400 sq. mi. and Washington at about 1000 sq. mi. Interestingly, in each of those 3 states that represents approximately 1.5% of their land area.
Of the 3 states the only one where fire seriously threatened a major metro area was Oregon where a large part of the SE Portland Metro area (mostly Clackamas Co.) was on Level 1 evacuation notice for quite some time. The initial take was that, approaching the Portland Metro area from the SE, the Willamette River would prove to be a major firebreak protecting seriously built up areas. But doubts about that were raised when areas in the valley between Salem and Portland were having spot fires flare up as far as 25 miles (documented) ahead of the fire front due to flying burning embers during the severe E. winds! (steady 20-30 kts. gusting to 40).
Fortunately, the E winds stopped when they did, or you might have seen a wildfire burning a significant part of a major metro area! I wish we could say that our smoke experience was limited to red sunsets. Even at the NW Coast, we had about a week where it was twilight at high noon and nothing cast a shadow!
The previously “legendary” Tillamook Burns of 1933, '39 & '45 in Oregon only burned a total of about 550 sq. miles, but there were plenty of news stories about red sunsets on the E. Coast & in Europe according to my parents.
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Sorry WillyJP to throw water on your figures but at this point over 6250 square miles or 4,000,000 acres have burnt in the last 2 months in California.
Last week the Glass Fire roared towards Santa Rosa and 35,000 people evacuated. My Aunt and Uncle fled as a few years ago their son’s house along with 1100 homes burnt to the ground on the north side of Santa Rosa. If Uncle as a retired Fire Chief skedaddles you know bad may be coming.
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I must have done something right. I can sit on my upper deck and experience the sunset from this angle
or motor outside the harbor and watch it sink below the horizon.
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Well you are absolutely correct about 4 mill. acres (6250 sq. mi.) or over 4% of CA burned in 2020.
So much for trusting a quick look at Google! In my defense, I can only cite this “helpful” Google clip (below) as my reference.
Interesting to note that the “genius bot” that came up with the 2018 year’s sq. miles rather than 2020’s apparently did it because I asked for “square miles” and not acres. And I didn’t stop to calculate that the link right below my erroneous 2609 sq. miles said 4 mil. acres which, at 640 acres/sq mi. on a moment’s guesstimation (2.6x10cubed x 6.4x10squared), gotta be WAY more than 2600!!
Sorry to understate that tragic proportion and happy to yield the smoke producing title back to CA!!
It is a great view, and community .
WillyJP Thanks for your explaining your figures. It has been two months of smoke with many weeks of 1 mile or less visibility.
As I have told my Mother “you can’t trust Dr. Google”.
That’s a beautiful shot, @cmakin 
The anchorage of Stromboli always puts on a spectacular light show when the wind is Westerly at sunset, something to do with the volcanic gases providing nucleation sites, but I somehow never took a picture of it despite being there far too many times.
Here’s one, IIRC from the Bay of Biscay on a calm evening:
Here’s one looking SE in the inner basin of St.Nazaire (behind the famous dock):
I also quite like this one, off the coast of Algeria somewhere, although technically imperfect and sorely lacking a subject. I might want to do it in gum bichromate some day:
This one, from the fishing harbor of Zarzouna, shows what you can get when the sun sets in the North African winter:
This final one has to be my favorite sunset shot. I had just broken up with a very special girl, and beaten an SV650 half to death racing the weather across Sardinia in a bid to deal with it. Nestling a Fuji S2950 PotatoCam in my shaking hands, I somehow captured this as the first drops started to fall:
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That last shot is beautiful. Capturing a rare moment in time and your mood at the same time at the end of a kick-ass motorcycle ride; priceless.
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Great art work.
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Yeah, that last is spectacular. Great timing. I shot this one in Chaguaramas a few years back when I was down on a fool’s errand. At least I got paid for it. . . .
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With regard to the Turner painting, once and only once anywhere in the world have I seen that. It was in the Gulf of Mexico, there was a mid level stratus layer stretching from horizon to horizon and the base of the cloud layer was illuminated by the Sun which was still just below the horizon.
The effect was more than just a spectacularly beautiful visual effect, it actually created a physical reaction, like a twinge of claustrophobia or believing you were in a huge cave with a lowering ceiling. It really was incredible. It was also impossible to capture on film.
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