After a few rainy and cloudy days, the last of the dark clouds pushed east this morning to reveal blue skies. Nothing lasts forever.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015 (Day 195)
An interesting scene up at the waterfront this morning. While the lower-hanging clouds remained mostly dark, the upper layer of clouds lit up in gorgeous color above my head. A fisheye lens was a necessity to capture this entire scene. I carry my fisheye with me in my bag almost every morning, but I rarely use it. Moments like this make it worth it to be prepared.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015 (Day 42)
Until today, I had only experimented with my fisheye lens on cloudy days to make the photos more interesting. But when I saw the bright colors of the sunrise this morning, I reached for the fisheye with the hope of making a photo that would do the lens a bit more justice.
Just yesterday I was thinking about how it would be interesting to get both the sun and the moon in one of my sunrise photos. Coincidentally, the moon was out this morning, shining down from a position where I could easily capture it in the top right of the frame.
So there it is, the sun and moon battling for the sky. By the looks of it here, I don’t think I have to tell you how this one ends.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015 (Day 41)
I lose my sense of time when I’m out there shooting by myself. Photography, especially in the serenity and stillness of the dawn, can be a meditative and even therapeutic experience. The black and white seems to best convey this frame of mind, especially on a cloudy morning.
There hasn’t been much sun lately, with six out of the last seven days being completely overcast.
This morning, I planned to go outside and just capture a quick photo, but after what felt like just a little while, I looked at my watch saw 30 minutes had passed. I knew I should probably get back home, even though I could have stayed out much longer.
Thursday, February 5, 2015 (Day 36)
I’m starting to develop a new appreciation for cloudy days. The sunrise isn’t much to look at on cloudy days, so I am forced to be more creative with the scene I am photographing. In the absence of a bright palette of colors bursting across the sky, there’s nowhere for me to hide. I can’t just point my camera at nature’s light show and press my shutter button, knowing that the photo will inherently posses a certain level of appeal regardless of how skillfully I construct it. Oh no, not cloudy days. They give you nothing. They don’t forgive. And that’s what I like about them—cloudy days push me harder.
Cloudy days allow me to experiment with shots I might not attempt in the face of a brilliant sunrise. Remember, the colors of a sunrise only last for a few minutes at a time, and they are constantly changing. A beautiful color explosion might last only a minute or two, sometimes even less. A colorful sunrise doesn’t give me much time to think, let alone experiment. But on cloudy days, the scene doesn’t change much from minute to minute, so I can take my time and try a few different things. I am able to see things I might not normally see, and put more thought into what I’m doing.
And perhaps the biggest benefit of my cloudy day experiments is that they give me ideas of what I can do when those mornings come when there is a brilliantly colorful and striking sunrise. Having experimented with certain scenes, and understanding their small nuances, I can confidently recreate them under the pressure of those intense moments when I feel that sense of urgency to capture the sunrise and do it well. When there isn’t much time to think, it’s nice to know I don’t have to.