Sunrise Fails to Change by an Hour

November 3, 2021 – Sunrise colours at the Red House – 8:16 AM Daylight Saving Time

We are back on Mountain Standard Time again. I’m slowly adjusting to the hour difference but sadly, the sunrise isn’t. It insists on colouring the clouds at about 7:16 AM instead of 8:16 AM. It will keep up this sloppy attempt at adjusting until about  mid December when it will be get back on track for putting on a show at the same time I am alert and ready to watch it.

I went for a hike to watch the sunrise and saw a group of young deer frolicking in the morning mist.
It was a fawn dew party.
– Author Unknown –

Two Texans were bragging about how big their ranches are.
The first guy said “Well I’ll put it to you this way, I can get in my truck before sunrise, drive all day long, and by sundown I still haven’t hit the other side of my spread.”
The other fella said, “Yeah, I used to have a truck like that.”
– Author Unknown –

One of the best things about Daylight Saving Time is that the clock in my car will finally be correct again.
– Author Unknown –

Removing the Colour

Sunset – original photo

Depending on your perspective, this could be a photo of a tree with a bright coloured background, or a sunset with a dark tree in the foreground.

A washed colour filter

Because they are primeval, because they outlive us, because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence. And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky.
– Kim Taplin –

This Palo Verde tree took a real beating in our recent snow storm! It was only because it was so big that it could afford to have a few branches amputated. A smaller tree might have been completely removed from the landscape!

A Black and White Filter

Black, white, shades of grey. What is the focus of this photo now!?

Spines, Scales and Rocks

Arizona in April – this is what is happening in my back yard:

I think this is a Claret Cup Cactus. If it isn’t, it should be because it seems like an appropriate name for it… Wicked thorns though…

How I like claret!…It fills one’s mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarrelling with one’s liver. No; ’tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step.
– John Keats –

The Side-blotched Lizard: If you look just behind the top of the front leg, you’ll see a long dark splotch – that is how this lizard got it’s name. These little lizards (4-6 inches or 10-15 cm in length including tail) are numerous, but easily overlooked because of their small size. They blend in well with the rocks and gravel, but are actually quite colorful when seen up close.

The male Side-blotched lizard often has bright turquoise blue speckling on the tail, back, and upper surfaces of the hind limbs

My yard is covered in a layer of gravel. The previous owner was big on ‘dry-creek bed’ features, so I have a lot of rocks that range in size from ‘pick up and carry around in your pocket’ size to ‘too heavy for me to lift’ size. I’ve been picking out oval shape flat rocks to build a ‘bed of rock daisies’.

Be a little boulder.
– Author Unknown –

Are you a ‘rock hound’? If you have rocks in your yard, are they an important part of the landscape or an inconvenience?

Moon and Venus Sunrise

Moon and Venus Sunrise. January 31, 2019

Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.
– Glen Cook, Sweet Silver Blues –

Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
– William Feather –

It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”
– H.G. Wells, The Time Machine –

I get up early and go to bed early. The Car Guy gets up late and goes to bed late. That gives each of us a 2-3 hour bit of solitude. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.”

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

Sunrise – Not Over Miami

Palm trees – yes. Miami – no.
Arizona!

Original Photo

Photo with an Impressionist filter.

Photo with an HDR contrast and dehaze filter.

Photo with an Impasto filter

This post was for the old WordPress.com Photo Challenge Rise/Set.

Palm Trees and Sunrises

Sunrise with contrails – a Radiance filter

Sunrise with a filter called Cave Dweller

Sunrise with a Cartoon filter

Sunrise with HDR, Contrast and Dehaze filters

Palm fronds – an impasto filter

All filters are available in a program called Topaz Studio.

This post was for the old WordPress.com photo Challenge Lines.

Line Up of Sunrises

We have a roof top patio in Arizona – a perfect place for watching sunrises, sunsets, and star gazing.

Sunrise with plane contrails.

The science behind contrails is fascinating. Contrails should never be a cause for alarm; after all, folks don’t flip out on chilly days when their breath forms a cloud. If it’s cold enough and the air is still, you might even notice a cloud hanging behind you for several meters.
– What really comes out of an airplane? Contrails, not chemtrails, The Washington Post –

Clouds aligned in rows.

The jagged lines of the mountains on the horizon and the palm trees in the neighbours yard.

Clouds are in line with the horizon.

The lines of palm fronds.

Are you on a flight path? Are the planes loud and noisy, or so high you don’t even notice them?

This week’s WordPress.com photo Challenge is Lines.

Recipe for a Dramatic Sunrise or Sunset

Are the sunrises and sunsets in your part of the world ho-hum?
If they are, then you could follow this recipe to make them spectacular!
– start with clean air, preferably in the fall or winter season. (You might have to travel somewhere to find these conditions.)
– marvel at the blue of the daytime sky, which is caused by the selective scattering of sunlight by air molecules. This scattering favours the shorter wavelengths of violet to blue.
– consider the much longer path through the atmosphere that sunlight has to travel in the morning and evening. It scatters more violet and blue, which creates the opportunity for reds and oranges to reach our eyes.
– finally, add some clouds to catch the red-orange rays and reflect this light to the ground.

It wasn’t until I investigated the science of the colour of sunrises that I realized that not everyone gets to see such a thing regularly! Now I know how fortunate I am to live in two parts of the world where this frequently occurs.

This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is Rise/Set

For a good explanation of scattering, see The Colors of Sunset and Twilight.

Question of the day – do you have dramatic sunrises and sunsets where you live? If so, how much thousands of photos have you taken of them?

On a Scale of Carousel to Roller Coaster, How Scary is this?

Winged Creature

Sunrise this morning. It was quite spectacular and changing rapidly. I quickly took a picture, then retreated back into the warmth of my house. When I uploaded the photo and enhanced it with a light touch of HDR in Topaz Studio, I realized that I had captured something much more sinister than a typical Alberta sunrise.

It was a winged creature, with a skull like head and sunken eye sockets. It was covered with woolly dreads. It rode on bolts of fire…

Poodle

Without HDR, it looked more like a poodle, I suppose…

Do you see a safe ‘carousel’ sky, or a scary ‘roller coaster’ sky?

‘On a scale of’ usually has a range of one to ten – but here are some other ‘Scales’ to think about:
On a scale of Voldemort to Pinocchio, how Nosy are you?
On a scale of Mother Teresa to Adolf Hitler, how evil is your President?
On a scale of Under the Porch Mat to Osama Bin Laden how good was my hiding spot?
On a scale of Pennies to a Pool Filled With $1000 Bills, how much does this house cost?
On a scale of Sitting on a Stuffed Toy to Stepping on a LEGO, how much pain are you in?
On a scale of Qatar to Greece, how broke are we?
On a scale of Winter in Florida to Winter in Siberia how bad is your idea?

Can you think of some other non-traditional scales?

This week’s WordPress.com Photo Challenge is Scale.

Half Moon and Sunrises

The photo challenge this week is Half-Light. At sunrise this morning, the moon appeared to be Half too!

The sun does not abandon the moon to darkness.
― Brian A. McBride, Dominion –

Same time, same sunrise, same moon (that tiny white dot near the top right of the photo.

The sky is that beautiful old parchment in which the sun and the moon keep their diary.
– Alfred Kreymborg –

In Alberta, these clouds would probably mean rain. Here in Arizona, at this time of the year, dark clouds are just dark clouds.

The latest authority among men of science says that little is known of the causes which balance the clouds in the air. They are formed of water, and water, however minutely divided or blown into bubbles, is always heavier than the air. And yet these flying fountains of all the rivers of earth, these armed and thundering legions of the storm, that beat down the forests with hail and bury the mountains in snow, and flood the plains with water, go floating over us at vast heights with all their mighty magazines when all our philosophy would require them to sink to the earth.
– Daniel March, “The Balancings of the Clouds,” Our Father’s House, or the Unwritten Word, 1869 –

Without clouds, sunrises aren’t nearly so dramatic!

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
– G.K. Chesterton –

What common phrases do you think of when you hear the word ‘Half’?

This weeks WordPress Photo Challenge is Half-Light.