So far on this trip the Sun has been with us and against us. But, on a day I least expected it, the Sun decided to have a little fun with me; specifically at sunset.
While watching for a nice sunset off my balcony on the ship I started taking long telephoto shots as the sun approached the horizon. The sky had some low clouds and the Sun started to go through them as the horizon neared. Off to my right I noticed out of the corner of my eye a cargo ship sailing across the horizon; it was just at the right distance that it appeared to sail directly on the horizon from my deck 8 balcony. I started to root for it as the Sun started to sink and ship continued to approach. In a stroke of luck, the Sun and ship perfectly aligned. You can see the results in the photo.
It gets better!
Many of you know that I’ve been talking about and trying to catch the green flash that is supposed to occur just as the Sun dips below the horizon. I’ve been told by many who have seen it that it takes special atmospheric conditions for the “flash” to occur (unlike the Pirates of the Caribbean movie the “flash” is more of just a color change at the last half second before the Sun completely disappears). The conditions of this night were far from ideal with the low clouds the Sun went through and a slight haze over the horizon. But, after the ship left the Sun’s disk I continued my sunset vigil looking to see/capture the change to green. Did not expect to find it.
The camera was set to -2EV (two stops below what the meter said exposure should be — that keeps the image of the sun properly exposed when the camera is focused directly on it). The shutter was set to multiple exposures at high speed (24 frames/second though the actual speed was closer to 20 fps due to the conditions). And, I was braced at telephoto (600mm equivalent). As the Sun continued to set I watched and just as a gold sliver was on the horizon I pressed and held the shutter for those last two seconds or so of the sunset.
Could not believe it when the Sun just was about to leave the horizon that gold sliver turned green!
Rushed back into the cabin and waited for the camera buffer memory to be written to the SD card and the card was then stuffed into the computer to see what I captured.
Yup! A change from gold to green covered about ten frames which means it lasted about a half second and I got the whole thing! The greenest part of the sunset is in the photo here. The photo is a screen shot of the blown up sunset. Might not look like much but it’s a bucket list item for me!
Onward. More posts coming in a day or two. We are in the part of the trip where we have a port a day and I have to keep sorting photos or risk falling too far behind to recognize anything in them. No time for the blog but I just had to make time for this Sun thing.