Sunset colors at Myrtle Beach

I’ve enjoyed far more sunrises than sunsets at Myrtle Beach, S.C., but the sunset I experienced there last week was very rewarding. Follow the sequential below as I try to describe things.

As I walked south at the start of the stroll, I watched as the sky colors transformed from a yellow orange (see first photo below) to increasingly more intense orange. A haze or mist also increased as I neared the end of a string of buildings along the beach, behind which the sun was starting to set.

The closer I got to that break in skyscrapers, the thicker the haze and more intense the orange.

Finally I saw the first burst of yellow, and I knew I’d see a sphere in a matter of seconds.

It was a spectacular show, but it wasn’t over yet. The golden sky was transcending to a large cluster of clouds in the northern sky ahead of me on the return trip, and the color in the clouds reflected onto the sheen of the tide lapping the shore in front of me. That’s what you see in the lead-off photo and the remaining pictures below, concluding with a shot of the a new cloud cluster hovering over a different set of buildings.

Mix of heavy haze and clouds transform sunrise into a warm-color spectacle

I've now shot enough sunrises and sunsets that I usually don't spend a lot of time on either of them any more unless there is a new element to them that piques my interest. 

Such was the case the morning of Aug. 26, when Lee Ann I awoke just a few minutes before the day's sunrise along North Topsail Island, N.C. We had been invited there to a house rental by her son and daughter-in-law to spend a couple days of R&R. 

Other than routine trips to local groceries, pharmacies, fast-food eateries and home improvement stores, it was the first time Lee Ann and I had ventured outside of our home since COVID-19 was declared a serious health threat in early March.

There were other people using the beach, but nothing close to the numbers you'd expect during a hot August week in a normal summer. 

We had talked about rising early enough one of the two mornings there to walk along the beach at dawn. So on the 26th, when we awoke noticing that the morning's schedule sunrise was just a few minutes away, we rushed to dress properly, and I grabbed my camera ... just in case. 

By the time we hit the beach, we'd gotten there with a minute or two to spare, and we saw the scene shown in the photo leading off the post. It was a pre-sunrise warm-color spectrum enhanced by the presence of a tapestry of clouds in all sizes and shapes. I couldn't wait to see what the sun would do with all that once it inched above the horizon. 

The answer comes in the photos -- roughly in chronological order -- shown below. I made various compositions, in most cases integrating few people on the beach into the shot to dramatize the color and exploit the silhouette opportunities. 

My favorite has wavered from the lead-off shot, to the fourth one below of the sun kissing the ocean just as the last of the orb inches above the horizon, to one of two shots of people walking into the solar reflection on the beach near the bottom. And notice, also near the bottom, several thin clouds draping themselves over portions of the sun.  

I made three exposures of each composition to give me a choice on the best frame to work with in post-processing. 

 Next up: The rest of my shots at North Topsail Island from the recent trip

What a difference a day makes ...

On Saturday, Feb. 6, I returned to Garfield Park, as a sort of follow-up to the shoot of the previous day (see images in previous post), when it snowed nearly all day and skies were gray and overcast.

Saturday, it was sunshiny and uplifting, and after putting a circular polarizing filter on my lens, I managed to capture some nice images, many zeroing in on leafless deciduous trees that presented striking foregrounds to the rich blue skies and some sharp backlighting photos enhanced by the polarizer.