Path to the Clouds | New Bern, NC
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Happy first day of Spring everyone! With the way the weather has been in the Eastern US lately, it’s easy to forget that it was still technically Winter. I thought this shot of a beautiful pastel sunset behind the NC History Center would be a great way to ring in one of my favorite seasons.
The History Center, part of Tryon Palace, is one of my favorite places to shoot the sunset in New Bern. There are so many great foreground elements there, especially these boardwalks and railings. The plant life is also starting to bloom in the gardens there and I’m really looking forward to working that life into these shots!
The shot: Nikon D90, Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 lens. f/22, 1”, ISO-100. 3 exposures, tonemapped with Photomatix. All three exposures and the tonemapped file were manually masked together in Photoshop. Finished with Nik Color Efex ‘Glamour Glow’ filter and ‘Pro Contrast’ filter.
Spring is Springing | New Bern, North Carolina
One fun thing about really concentrating on shooting sunsets over the past year is being able to watch the seasons change as well as the sun’s path in the sky. A spot I like to get out to at least once a week is the boardwalk area behind the NC History Center in New Bern. It has been great watching the plant life go through its stages of growth, death and rebirth over the past year. Along with it, the arrival and departure of different birds is something to be noted as well. This week, I have noticed that some color is returning to the marshes. Leaves are starting to show on the trees and lily pads are staring to appear in the water.
Anatomy of a Pastel Sunset- This sunset, shot on February 29, was taken during one of my favorite conditions. Pastel sunsets are great, and I’ve found them to occur when there are low clouds on the horizon and high clouds throughout the sky. The low clouds seem to push the sun’s rays upward, while the high clouds diffuse the light and cast it over everything. With the blue sky showing through, everything takes a nice pastel hue.
The shot: Nikon D90, 8mm Rokinon lens. f/22, 1/10 second, ISO-200. Two exposures, manually blended.
Riding Off Into The Sunset | Beaufort, North Carolina
I admittedly don’t spend enough time hanging out in the town of Beaufort. It’s a great historic little town with a lot to see and photograph. Like a lot of places like that, it took family coming into town to get us out there and exploring. After a failed attempt to take a ferry over to Cape Lookout (unseasonable warm + off-season makes things like that a little chaotic) we decided to visit Beaufort and walk around the waterfront and see what there was to see. After checking out some great little shops, we were met with a fantastic sunset over the Beaufort Inlet.
One thing that we all were delighted to see were the huge number of migrating birds flying over head and into the sunset. It was quite a sight to behold. Further up the waterfront, I put a longer lens on and was able to get some geese flying in formation behind the tower of a Hatteras yacht. It was a great end to a memorable day with my family.
The shot: Nikon D90, 18-105 VR Nikkor @ 50mm. Singe exposure, f/11, 1/200 sec.
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Layers of Clouds | Atlantic Beach, NC
With the sun setting to the right of me, I set up toward the clouds over the ocean that were reflecting the purples, pinks and orange hues of the sunset back down on the water. I love sunsets like this because the clouds almost give the scene a high-def feel and you can really see the layers in them thanks to the diffused light reflecting off of them, bouncing up off the water and all around within them. Pastel sunsets almost get a leg-up in my book, over blazing colorful ones. Almost…
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