Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place & home

Posts tagged ‘sunset’

Playa del Mar, Coquimbo, Cruz del tercer milenio, La Serena, Region de Coquimbo, Chile, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday in La Serena: February summer sunset

I highlight the La Serena-Coquimbo area in north-central Chile, where I lived from 2006 to 2011 after many visits to the area between mid-1990s and the early aughts.

5 Mar – Playa de 4 Esquinas (Beach at the 4 Corners).
12 Mar – Cruz del tercer milenio (Cross of the Third Millennium).
19 Mar – Embalse Puclaro (Puclaro dam and reservoir).
26 Mar – Pisco Elqui.

The shallow J-shaped bay and the 10-km long narrow strip of sand facing the Pacific Ocean is very popular in summer with visitors streaming into town from Argentina, Brazil, and other parts of Chile, ballooning both people- and vehicle-numbers. Always worth spending is time on the beach on a calm sunny morning or on a windy cloudy afternoon. The image here is late-afternoon on a beautiful warm late-summer day in February with the sun setting over the Coquimbo peninsula across the bay.

I made the photo above on 22 February 2006 with a Canon PowerShot A510. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-jtG.

Spanish Banks, Salish Sea, Strait of Georgia, Georgia Strait, Vancouver, British Columbia, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Spanish Banks’ sunset over the Salish Sea

The Salish Sea, 5 of 5.

The Salish Sea is a body of water encompassing Georgia Strait, Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet, Puget Sound, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The sea is named after the Coast Salish people who are the first inhabitants of the region. The renaming without displacing the old geographic names occurred in 2010.

Any sign of an early summer arrives with temperatures stretching past the 21C/70F mark. Vancouver residents flock to the beaches at Spanish Banks for time with family, friends, and their furry pets. There’s beach volleyball; there are leashed dogs docile and relaxed, and unleashed dogs running wild with tongues wagging out. Hours pass, sunscreen is applied and forgotten, the burn is on the necks and shoulders, the burn is on the meats and veggies on the grill. Before you know it, sun’s down, temperature begins to drop, and it’s time to pack up. Before you leave, spare a thought for the Spanish Navy who sailed into these waters in the latter half of the 18th-century: geographic testament lies in names Juan de Fuca, Galiano, Lángara, Malaspina, etc.

I made the photo on 6 June 2014 with a Canon 6D (mark 1) with 70-300 glass and the following settings: 1/200-sec, f/8, ISO200, and 92mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-b5H.

Pacific Ocean, Hilton Waikoloa Village, Waikoloa Village, Kona side, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, fotoeins.com

Rise and Set: First and Last Light

Above/featured: Facing west into the Pacific from Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii, USA – 19 May 2008.

For the last ten years, it’s been an interesting exercise to photograph a variety of sunrises and sunsets at a number of locations around the world. One of my favourite locations was Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in north-central Chile, a place I visited and subsequently worked as astronomer between 1995 and 2011.

But my favourite “sun time” is summer sunrise. Early morning in July has a very special feel; the air is different, it’s still, it’s warm. Birds chirp idly, while the few humans out and about chatter quietly. All like me have eschewed sleep to witness daybreak and sunrise before 6am.

This post is a contribution to WPC’s Rise/Set. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-bFO with the seven photos appearing here made between 2008 and 2014.

First Light

Final Light

Sunset, Cerro Pachon, Cerro Tololo, Region de Coquimbo, Chile

Sunset over the Salish Sea (English Bay), from St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada - 8 Aug 2014, fotoeins.com

His final sunset over the Salish Sea

Every day felt like a bonus, a sweet taste of daily magic.

Over the time he spent in the hospital, Dad charmed the staff by chatting with them in broken English; it was a way for him to express some measure of control. As expected with decreasing hemoglobin levels, his body continued the downward slide. His mind and spirit departed at the beginning of the third week; he had become unresponsive. Over the next five days, his body remained, the breathing steady, though shallow and sometimes laboured. He was calm, at peace, and thanks to the meds, without pain.

From the top of St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, Canada, I photographed this post-sunset scene on 8 August 2014, with fading light peeking up and over the cirrus, high over the Salish Sea (English Bay) and the downtown peninsula. I’m sure he sensed the daily change in light, even though he could no longer see by the end.

Hours later the following morning, Dad breathed his last and slipped away for good. He marked his 82nd birthday six weeks earlier.

The long road for him has ended; another chapter and another journey begins.

Warmest thanks to the staff at St. Paul’s Hospital, and particularly, the men and women who work enthusiastically and gracefully in the hospital’s Palliative Care Unit. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-5vy.

Summer solstice sunset silhouette at the Salish Sea : Second Beach, Stanley Park, Vancouver, Canada - 21 Jun 2014, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: summer solstice sunset silhouette

On a beautiful warm sunny day on Canada’s West Coast, the first day of summer feels like the everybody in Vancouver shows up in parks and beaches. There are countless numbers of bicyclists; rollerbladers; people walking the Seawall; families, children giggling away, babies in strollers; people walking their dogs, and people on the beach to get their tan on. I’m glad my friend, Megan, was with me to watch this magnificent sunset.

Two additional summertime shots appear here and here.

What’s your favourite memory of summer? Please leave your comments below!

I made the photo above at Second Beach in Vancouver’s Stanley Park on the evening of 2014’s summer solstice (21 June). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com, and also appears on Travel Photo Thursday for Nancie McKinnon’s Budget Travelers Sandbox.

Dover Heights, Sydney, Australia

Sydney’s sunset heights: a golden crown at the Harbour Bridge arch

It’s late-April, and the days grow shorter in autumn here in the southern hemisphere. That also means that with each passing day towards the winter solstice, the sun’s path across the sky drifts a little bit northwards. The 23.4-degree tilt of the Earth’s rotation-axis with respect to the Earth’s orbital-plane around the Sun ensures that most of the planet experiences four seasons with every full orbit or revolution around the Sun.

From my desire to photograph sunsets here in Sydney, Australia, I knew that the setting sun would soon intersect the crown in the arch of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge as viewed from Dover Heights in the eastern suburbs. Frequent “reconnaissance” visits to Dover Heights (and getting to know the 380 bus-route very well), I had worked out how much the position of the (setting) sun would change in the sky with every passing day.

There would be an occasional day when a part of me would reject the notion of heading out to try again. The reasonable side of me wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s sunny, it’s +25C, you have to go through Bondi Beach (awww); so, get your butt out there before you regret it.” Aaaah, because regret and me, you know we’re … “this” close.

With a successful experiment to photograph sunsets (and the full moon) in late-April, I have no regrets.

( Click here for more )

Dover Heights, Sydney, Australia

Sydney: sunsets from west and east

It can be a little unusual to view a sunset from both west and east.

From the west looking east, the sun is behind the viewer, and the setting sun illuminates everything in front of the viewer; that’s a way to describe “front illumination.” From the east looking west, the sun is in front of the viewer, and anything in between the sun and the viewer will appear (mostly) in silhouette; this is an example of “back illumination”.

That’s all very wordy to be sure, but I have above photos of two sunsets in Sydney, one sunset seen from the west and another sunset seen from the east.

In the first case, I boarded the Parramatta River ferry and headed east towards the City as the sun set behind us on the boat. In the second case, I wandered over to Dover Heights in the eastern suburbs to watch the sunset directly in front of me.

In both cases, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is the centrepiece for the setting sun.

Addendum: this photographic experiment became a complete success two weeks after the first photo I made on 14 April …

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Hamburg: sunset at Sandtorhafen

Sunset over Speicherstadt (click me)

Sandtorhafen, Speicherstadt : Hamburg, Germany.

Speicherstadt, Hamburg

Both photos above were made on 2 October 2011 with the Canon EOS450D camera, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens, and camera settings 1/200s (roughly), f/5.6, ISO100, 300mm focal length. This post is published on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com.

Where I work

Winter can be a frustrating time at an astronomical observatory with the presence of dark threatening clouds, freezing temperatures, high humidity, blustery winds, and blowing snow.

With a month remaining in the Chilean southern winter and the forecast for clearing skies, the nighttime-observing crew arrived tonight (28 Aug 2011) at the Cerro Pachón summit with the following view towards the Andean spine to the east, and the setting sun behind us to the west.

Cerro Pachon, Chile
View from Cerro Pachón, Chile – 28 August 2011.

This photo was taken at an altitude of about 2700 metres (8860 feet) above sea-level.

The dome-shadow at lower-centre is Gemini Observatory (South); I stood in its shadow at the edge of the ridge where I made this photograph. The dome-shadow at the lower-left is the SOAR Telescope.

You can compare the photo above with the following photo I made 5 weeks ago, one minute after sunset …

Cerro Pachon, Chile
View from Cerro Pachón, Chile – 24 July 2011.

The view sure is pretty up here.

At the centre of the photo above, the background ‘peak’ marked by the red pin (in the Google map below) is 4450 metres high (14600 feet) with a line-of-sight distance of 32 km (20 miles) to the east southeast (heading 96 degrees). Over to the right of the photo, the foreground ‘peak’ marked by the green pin is 4340 metres high (14200 feet) with a line-of-sight distance 19 km (12 miles) to the east southeast (heading 106 degrees). The location of Cerro Pachón is marked by the blue pin below.

After 15 years in the business, it’s a little difficult to imagine (but getting easier to accept) that I’m packing it in by the end of this year for something new and different.

This post was published originally on Fotoeins Fotopress (fotoeins.com).

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