At my normal post this morning just making sure the sun rises on time, when I saw Venus high and bright in the sky. This morning at sunrise there was an eastern hairline moon rising, with Venus and Saturn. Due to the trees being in the way I could not see the moon. On Thursday evening just after sunset there will be a western hairline moon with Venus, on the western horizon, and I should be able to photograph them both.
Click to enlarge.
`Looking for the eastern hairline moon.
Venus peeping shyly through the leaves.
Venus magnified through the camera lens.
For those interested in the technical details of the above shot;
Camera; Canon PowerShot SX40
Mode: Manual mode
Shutter: 1/10 second
App: f5.8
ISO: 3200
Lens: 150.5mm focal length.
Sunrise this morning wasn't too shabby either.
Every week I tell myself the same thing, "come Sunday and I'm going to lie in a bit." Come Sunday, what happens? I'm up at my usual time, drinking my first cup of coffee. This morning was no different, I sat in my chair watching the sun come up. Being mid winter the sun only comes up at 06:50, and I had been up since 5:30. (This is about 40 minutes later than my usual time, so I suppose I did lie in a bit).
Then, as if on cue, the show began.
Five minutes later the sun is visible through the branches.
And suddenly the whole glowing ball is visible, almost seems to be shaking itself free of the clutching branches.
Even though I watch the sunrise most mornings, and have a fair understanding of the physical laws behind the spectacular light, I'm still enthralled by it just as Adam must have been when he saw his first sunrise.
Thursday the 21st is our winter solstice, and from Friday the sun starts rising a fraction earlier every morning so that by mid December it's up almost two and a half hours earlier than now. By November the sun and I will be in sync again, both up at the same time.
Continuing with my photo editing experiments, I took two photos of a rather colourless sunset, (mostly white clouds) and blended them in Gimp photo editing programme.
Click to enlarge.
So who say's a photo can't lie?
Gimp is a free photo editing programme, and I have found it very easy to use.
The cold, dry weather that we are having at moment, creates perfect atmospheric conditions for dramatic sunrises and sunsets. This morning while I was having my coffee I watched the sun rising like a big red ball.
Click to enlarge.
The dust haze reduces the amount of 'flare', that would normally occur when shooting directly into the sun, without some sort of filter.
Feeling as proud as Punch, blended my first two photos, (same scene, different exposures), successfully and made one reasonable picture. I have discovered that to simplify matters you need to take both originals using a tripod.
First photo.
Exposed for the sky, foreground washed out.
Second photo.
Exposed for the foreground, sky washed out with no detail.
Combination of the two.
Click to enlarge.
Both exposures combined, good foreground and much more detail in the sky, sky still too light though. To use some new photographic buzz words I've just learn't, "better dynamic range." The mountains in the background are very far away. In the middle distance in front of the dark hill one can see some electricity pylons, part of an electrical substation that is about 7km away from where I was standing. The telephoto effect of the cameras zoom lens compresses the distance and makes things look closer than they really are.
Once I learn how to do cloning I'll remove the pylons and have a pure landscape.
This old man keeps surprising himself with all the new tricks his learning.
I came across this quote today by the photographer Alain Briot.
"In "education" there is schooling and there and there is true education, paideia, to use the Greek term. Schooling is how we acquire skills and knowledge. Education is about what stirs the soul."
AlainBriot.com
In education today there is lots of schooling, but little true education.
The weather has gone from warm to freezing overnight. So far we have had a very mild winter, but yesterday we had a gale strength wind blowing from the north which is always a warning of a cold front moving in from the south west. The cold front pushes the air off the high plateau of South Africa over the Drakensberg escarpment. As it descends it heats up, (adiabatic heating) causing temperatures to shoot up. Yesterdays hot wind just sucked the life out of the remaining green plants in the garden, leaving shrivelled leaves.
The cold front moves in right behind the hot wind, and suddenly it's freezing cold, from one extreme to the next. This sudden drop in temperatures brought some unexpected visitors from the high mountain regions.
Taking the dogs out for a walk I spotted a flock of Southern Bald Ibis, these birds prefer to live at high altitudes, so seeing them here is unusual. They were a long way of, so my photos aren't to clear, I was also shivering quite a bit from the cold, causing some blurring.
Southern Bald Ibis. The birds use their long, sensitive, beaks to probe between plant and grass stems and in the ground for insects.
This paddock was mowed a couple of days ago providing a perfect feeding area for them, as they prefer short grass.
Southern Bald Ibis are listed as vulnerable.
