I had hoped to catch both of them at some point, but since I have to send the big rental lens back soon, one is going to have to do. This is one of my local bald eagles on his favorite perch, silhouetted against the sunrise this morning.
I figure some of you nutty squirrels out there might want to see what the sunrise looked like this morning. Well, here you go.
Well, after sleeping in Lakeland for a few hours last night, then driving to Titusville at three this morning, I discovered that the shuttle launch had been scrubbed just after midnight thanks to a hydrogen leak. So much for a picture perfect countdown. It was a long way to go only to miss the big show, but I did get to shoot Endeavour on the pad, albeit from an awful long way away.
I did get to see the sun come up from the causeway, though. But I had to wait a couple of hours for even that to happen. Trust me when I say I was there early! When I finally got back to my house on the other coast, I slept for another four hours.
In a rare feat that I don't think I have ever previously accomplished, I shot both the sunrise and the sunset today. The pictures aren't spectacular, but just the idea of getting both is pretty cool. The picture above was taken out the window of my hotel in Macedonia, Ohio. The window only opens about 5 inches, so I was crouched down trying to shoot from a quite uncomfortable position. The shot below is the sun setting over the hills on the west side of the Cuyahoga Valley. I was standing on a stone outcropping in the Virginia Kendall Ledges, a beautiful spot in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It took me a while to find a clear view of the horizon, and I was shooting through a 300mm lens to be able to squeeze between the trees. More pictures to come from not-so-sunny Ohio. Although how can it be not-so-sunny if I saw both the sunrise and the sunset? Long story, and a long day in-between...
This week features Independence Day, so it's only appropriate that the calendar page features a flag. I shot this early one morning at work, as the sun was coming up over the building across the street. Their flag was silhouetted by the clouds, and I felt it was a great time to take a picture.
Well, here I am in Ohio, and what a shock to the system. The shot above is from right before I boarded the plane. That's the skyline of Tampa off to the right. And below was the view outside the terminal after landing at Cleveland-Hopkins a few hours later. It was actually snowing quite a bit while the plane was landing, but it ended quickly. It's been fairly nice ever since, if you can call anything below freezing nice. At least it's not snowing anymore...
After days and days of rain and snow in Ohio, this was the sunrise on my last morning there. I think maybe they were happy to see me go. And there are those crummy power lines, again!
Here's the sunrise from this morning in Twinsburg, Ohio. I just can't get away from these power lines...
Sometimes you have to turn around and look in the wrong direction. This oddly illuminated cloud was opposite the sunrise this morning. The sunrise wasn't too exciting, but I thought this half-lit cloud was pretty neat. As I watched, the light spread out from left to right across the cloud, then the color started to fade away as the sky brightened. Weird...
As part of an ongoing tradition, here's another marvelous sunrise scarred by some inconvenient power lines. This was the view this morning from work. It was more spectacular in person, but I wasn't able to catch it with my lens. I know some of you folks don't like it when I point out the faults with my own pictures, but they really stand out to me.
Here's a little shot of sunrise this morning. I was at work, so I was pretty limited on what shots I could get. Had I known this sunrise was coming, I would have driven somewhere else. So try to look past the unsightly power lines in the foreground. This picture doesn't really do justice to the breathtaking panorama that spread out as the sun inched towards the horizon (yes, this occurred prior to the sun actually coming up). It probably went on for twenty minutes or more, which is forever for a sunrise this grand. I'm on my way to Ohio later this afternoon. I'll be there for a whole week on business, and I expect I won't be seeing this sort of thing up there this time of year. I suspect this sunrise was nature's way of saying hurry home...
