Travel Album: On the Way: Sydney to San Francisco over the Pacific Ocean

The setting sun throws the engine cowling into harsh relief.

On 23 May I flew from Sydney to San Francisco, on the way to Toronto. I didn’t get much sleep over the Pacific, but the stunning sunset and sunrise at 33,000ft made up for it — almost. 😉

As the sky darkens, a single bright star is visible above the band of intense sunset colour.

Reflections in the engine cowling:

Beginning of sunset: the cloud tops are tinged with pink, and the fuselage is reflected in the engine cowlingl.

Sunrise: the fuselage and the rising sun are reflected in the engine cowling.

Sunrise:

The horizon is delicate shades of blue and pink, and the rising sun makes metal points on the wing glow as if they were lights.

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The sun also rises

Sydney, 20 March 2015, 6:38am

I must apologise to Ernest Hemingway for nicking his title — but it is apt, in a way. I’m not a big fan of getting up, let alone getting up early, so the only time I see sunrises in Sydney is in the winter, when the sun gets up at the same time I do. As such, I do tend to forget that the sun doesn’t just set, it also rises. We are still in late summer, but for some crazy reason I woke up early today, alert and awake. Perhaps my subconscious knew the sunrise would be spectacular!

Hmm, maybe I should turn over a new leaf. Reset my alarm clock and greet the dawn of each fresh new day, coffee in one hand and camera in the other. Capture a full year of sunrises. Or maybe I should sleep on the idea …

Sunrise (a crop of the next photo)

Sunrise (full version of previous photo)

Sunrise – higher now, and look at that shimmer below the sun. Reflection or illusion?

This is plant pot decoration (the ball glows in the dark), silhouetted against the rising sun.

Serenity at sea

“And if the wind is right you can sail away and find serenity.
Oh, the canvas can do miracles, just you wait and see.”
– Christoper Cross, ‘Sailing’

Just before dawn, Indian Ocean ‘Lord Nelson’

Sunrise, Indian Ocean ‘Lord Nelson’

The most serene time on a tall ship is just before dawn. The ship’s crew are all asleep, except for the duty watch and the officer of the watch. As the stars give way to the sunrise, you feel as if you are the only people in the world.

(I couldn’t decide which of these photos to use, so went with both.)

Sydney Summer Sunrise

Early morning was idyllic. It was the perfect summer day in Sydney: empty blue skies, low humidity, gentle ocean breezes, and birds thronging in the trees. It’s the time of year when the sun rises from the ocean directly in front of my apartment building, rather than behind the building to the right (high summer) or behind the houses and trees to the left (deep winter).
It was the kind of morning that heralds a day filled with possibility. A day that draws you to the beach, or a bushwalk in one of many national parks that fringe our stunning harbour. Perhaps a long, lazy lunch with friends at a favourite eatery.
Or, in my case, eight hours in a shiny-sided office tower in the Central Business District. 😦
Here is a shot of this morning’s sunrise. The first photo is the original, and the others are the same photo but with various Photoshop wizardry applied. Do you have a favourite?

The original, which the camera on Intelligent Auto rendered as a silhouette.

With a warming filter applied and the light bumped up.

With an HDR (high dynamic range) filter applied. I learned about this just yesterday. Not something I’d do a lot of, but it’s an interesting effect!

Black and white, with some light added to the shadows.

Rainy days and Mondays

Do you know that song with the line “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down“? Well, today’s a Monday, and it’s raining, which means a double dose of the blues. 😦 So I thought I’d share some rainy photos with you.

Even drenched in rain, nothing smells as heavenly as a frangipani (plumeria) flower.

Raindrops on my window.

Sunrise caught in raindrops on the rail, ‘Lord Nelson’ in the Indian Ocean.

Sunny Bali.

No one sitting on these park benches in Monterrey, Mexico.

Behind the scenes: unknown to me, my mother snapped a photo of me shooting the raindrops on the park bench. That’s my father with the umbrella!

Me and Monet

Monet had his water lilies; I have my yellow Osteospermums. Like Claude Monet, I find myself coming back to the same subject in different lights. But that, I fear, is all I have in common with the great Impressionist painter!

The plants are backlit by the rising sun, which gives the whole photo a warm orange-yellow glow.
The extreme zoom has blurred the gum tree in the background, adorned by ‘specular highlights’ that glitter like jewels on the leaves.

Another day, another photo of
osteospermums at sunrise.

Slightly later in the morning,
and the golden glow is fading.

The flowers are their natural yellow in the clear sharp light of a winter afternoon.

An extreme zoom in the afternoon, with just one or two flowers in sharp focus against a cloudless sky.

Claude Monet deserves a look in, too:
this is one of his Nymphaea (water lily) panels
at the Orangerie, Paris.

And just for a laugh, a photograph I took of water lilies in Goa, India
— also hanging in the Orangerie. 😉

From sunrise in the first photo, to sunset in this one.