Settling Into Evening
Settling Into Evening
Sunset fading orange casts a warm glow on snow-covered rooftops and streets; shadows tinge violet. Houses, mill and more houses march across the valley in courses, filling from one hill to the next.
Flying Into the Sunset
Flying Into the Sunset
Fine snow in the air just after a snow squall softens the sunset as a blue jay is silhouetted against the light show.
This is taken from the same spot as the red sunset from a few days ago. Each sunset is beautiful in its own right.
Rich Winter Sunset
Rich Winter Sunset
The light was fleeting but breathtaking, the little lights of streets and houses set in the velvet of valley in darkness, the tree branches, buds already swelling, silhouetted in deep indigo against the scarlet of the end of day.
I saw it happening as I sat at my desk and ran to the top of the hill, almost too late.
Good Night Little Town
“Good Night Little Town”
Tonight’s sunset reminded me of this photo I took several years ago from a ridge above Carnegie PA. It’s one of my favorite places to observe the sunset or incoming storms, and the valley includes nearly all of Carnegie. In this view you can see the snow-covered rooftops of houses, businesses and industrial buildings with a slight violet glow and the winding course of Chartiers Creek reflecting the pale aqua of the sky as it meanders through town and the sun slowly sets on a bitter cold winter evening. Tonight’s sunset looked like this, even down to the snow on the rooftops, but I couldn’t get to this vantage point in time to get the photo. Still, I wanted to share this moment; I’ve never posted this image on Today before.
“Good Night Little Town” is one of 14 images of Carnegie PA in my exhibit, “Carnegie Painted”
Song Sparrow at Dusk
Song Sparrow at Dusk
A few birds always gather at dusk to find their last meal for the night, and there is always enough seed on the ground for them to feed, dangerous though it is. One little song sparrow balances on a branch near the ground to scout for the best spot before dropping down to eat. A male and female sparrow joined him in the gathering darkness.
I’ve always liked a song sparrow’s little round and striped body. Below is the same song sparrow in a view from the front.
Song Sparrow
Reaching Sunset
Reaching Sunset
This was today’s sunset, not the gaudy one in Last Light of Day, but this explains why I was following it. All those little wisps of clouds became so dramatic, sunrays lifting here and there, it was quite the show.
The Last Light of Day
The Last Light of Day
Each headstone is touched by the last light of day.
One of the times I wish I had had my DSLR with me instead of the little pocket digital which really couldn’t handle the subtleties of this image. The sunset was not so garish and tropical-looking and the headstones had more detail, but you can imagine the peace and quiet in this scene. I was following the sunset as I drove around for errands, and saw this coming up on the road ahead of me, pulled over and got the best shot I could.
This is Chartiers Cemetery in East Carnegie, southwest of Pittsburgh. Established in 1863 during the Civil War as a public burial ground it tells many stories. In the center a slender white line is the flagpole; they lowered the flag shortly after I took this photo. Slightly to the right of that the tall slender gray figure is the monument to the Civil War dead, and around them the veterans’ section of the cemetery.
Sunset, Abandoned Barn
Sunset With Old Barn
I couldn’t stop to photograph today but got this one several years ago, a sunset behind this abandoned barn.
The house is gone now, simply fallen to pieces or pulled down by Virginia Creeper vines, a nice big, square four-bedroom farmhouse on a rise with a nice view at a bend in the road adjacent to a developed neighborhood. No one had lived there for decades, but if it had ever gone for sale, I was ready. It never did.
Barns tend to stand a lot longer than houses. They are built to carry much more weight and stress, animals, equipment, materials, feed, and they don’t go down easily. The house is gone but the barn lives on. Someone cuts the grass, but I’ve always wondered at the story.
Sunset With Twisted Trees
Sunset With Twisted Trees
Suddenly, the trees are bare. The framework of stark and wandering branches which had faithfully held the leaves since spring is revealed to be as interesting as the tree in full leaf.
Early winter sunsets are breathtaking.
Afterglow
Afterglow.
Sunsets are always colorful at the end of a rainy day.
Below is a panorama of the entire horizon I created from four individual images.
The full sunset.
Vanilla Ice Cloud, 2011
Vanilla Ice Cloud
Doesn’t this cloud look like a bowl of vanilla ice cream? I’ve left a little bit of foliage and a building roof in for scale.
And who could call it “white”?
Big clouds like this have such depth and hold and reflect so much light and shadow, especially at this moment when they are catching the last rays of the sun before it sets below the horizon, reflecting the sunset in their own manner.
At Sunset in the Woods, 2010
In the Woods at Sunset
Sometimes camera shots abstract themselves. I was walking in the woods as the sun went down, and as the sun glowed brighter and brighter just over the horizon, it flared through the branches. I have an entire series of these, but this was my favorite.
Sunset
Sunset.
It’s not the best photo—I only had my little point and shoot—and I couldn’t find a space in the sky with no wires, but I had to photograph it nonetheless. It unfolded over the space of at least 30 minutes, each moment lovelier than the last.
The Hawk at Sunset
Hawk at Sunset
Such a simple composition, but so much there, the last colors blending warm and cool, the geometry of the post, wires and fixtures, and the hawk, silent in the evening breeze.
Happy 100th, Woody Guthrie
Blue and Gold
Even the steel rolling mill is beautiful in a golden hot summer sunset, the windows reminding me of both simple church windows and an old-fashioned door with stained glass rectangles around the outside.
They are working in there in this heat, and all the air conditioning in the world will not keep a steel mill cool in the summer. We still have a few around, just small specialty mills; this is Union Electric Steel in Carnegie, where my mother’s father worked from the time he arrived in Carnegie after 1912.
The contrast of the turquoise and gold is stunning, and the paned windows, open at various angles, reminds me of being in church on a hot summer morning in the long-ago days before air conditioning. This in turn reminds me of attending Catholic grade school and attending mass twice weekly where I paid more attention to the sun through the windows than I did to the Latin recitation of the service by a very old priest who mumbled.
It’s all wrapped up together in the experience of a lot of Americans like me, and those of us from blue-collar families and industrial towns and cities everywhere—the industries, the factories, the people, the schools, churches, homes, neighborhoods, music, food and all that culture parts of the whole that comes back in one photo like this one.
And while many sang about the things we grew up with, there’s one artist who set the standard and made a life of it. No doubt you’ve sung one or more of his songs. Happy birthday, Woody Guthrie, and visit this link to listen to a “sidestream” of his music: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.folkalley.com%2Fsidestream.asx&h=UAQG9e3LK
Nightfall
Sunset With Twisted Trees
At this time of year, when an overcast afternoon can make the 5:00 sunset seem to happen at 4:00, I’ll take whatever sun I can get. But I also appreciate how the overcast often dramatically breaks just at the end of the day, as if to give us a gift of rambling sunlight, swirling clouds and changing colors we might not otherwise appreciate on a bright sunny day. The lacy bare trees of early winter etch a chiaroscuro on the light show.
At Sunset
At Sunset
The scene somehow looks foreboding as the clouds part and the sun sets brightly behind them, creating great continents of dark shadows in the sky and silhouetting the house with the turret at the top of the hill (at the top of my hill, by coincidence. Any other house, like the other in the photo, would not be so engaging, but the house with the turret, the bare trees, the disappearing sun, now that might be a story…
Tonight’s Sunset
Tonight's Sunset
Only in winter do I see this effect, the brilliant red on the undersides of the clouds. Perhaps it’s the angle of the sun in winter or the types of clouds we have, I’m not sure, but I saw the effet begin as I was on end-of-day errands and, glad I was in my car instead of on foot, I raced a little faster than posted speed limits to my favorite hilltop for sunset viewing. Love that big sky.
Twilight Sky
Twilight Sky
I have always loved this time of day with just the reflected light of the sun below the horizon, as the shadow of the earth creeps up from the east toward the western horizon. Even the clouds catch the gradation, though a few here are still touched with the fire of sunset.
Vanilla Ice Cloud
Vanilla Ice Cloud
Doesn’t this cloud look like a bowl of vanilla ice cream? I’ve left a little bit of foliage and a building roof in for scale.
And who could call it “white”?
Big clouds like this have such depth and hold and reflect so much light and shadow, especially at this moment when they are catching the last rays of the sun before it sets below the horizon, reflecting the sunset in their own manner.
Layered Sunset
Layered Sunset
This tall layering of various types of clouds and different colors for each layer reminded me of one of those layered desserts. But the varieties of clouds, their shapes and densities and the patterns they are whipped into from winds aloft never ceases to amaze me. These clouds are so varied in part because the lowest layer is rain clouds moving in over the horizon from the west bringing turbulence. The changing season guarantees interesting skies just about all the time.
Sunset
Sunset
Just a nice sunset on a varied-weather day. Storms are in the area, layers of clouds and capricious breezes, and now and then it simply begins to rain, even when the sun is shining. I keep hoping to see a rainbow, but warm golden sunrays are nice too, and there is a bit of a rainbow of color reflected against the cloud.
At Sunset in the Woods
In the Woods at Sunset
Sometimes camera shots abstract themselves. I was walking in the woods as the sun went down, and as the sun glowed brighter and brighter just over the horizon, it flared through the branches. I have an entire series of these, but this was my favorite.
