Winter sunset on the Kenai Mountains

Sure it was 33 degrees and raining for the last 5 days, but I’ll still argue that I live in one of the most majestic places in the world. When that low pressure blew itself on out of here us ‘Homerites’ were blessed with one incredibly stunning sunset. The kind that make you pinch yourself and mumble – Holy cow, it’s for real, no photoshop, it just happens in nature!

I might not write about this, but after last nights sunset we had another gorgeous sunrise that put the icing on the visual cake of the last couple days. Contrast that with the last few days I’ve spent in the office trying to reassemble my computer. . . I decided to upgrade my system, which involved changing out the motherboard, nerd speak for the brains of my computer. I thought it would be easy and quick. Well, it turned out to be neither of those.

On the second day a friend, who knows me well, called with an alert to the unfolding magic outside. He called because in his own words – “I figured you were working on your computer.” That nonsense ended quickly. I ran outside and set up a still camera (canon 20D) on the porch with an interval timer instructing it to shoot a time laps sequence. Then I scurried up the hill behind my house to shoot the sunset from a better perspective than my porch offers. I often find myself in a situation of mild panic when the light is perfect out. Quick! quick! The light might be gone in 5 minutes. This must be what it’s like to practice triage in a medical emergency. You might only have ten minutes. Photo opportunities are dying left and right. You must do something, but what? You can’t do it all. In this case I went for a quick setup on the time laps camera. Putting it on the porch where the view isn’t the best but it still looked promising. Then I moved to a better view point to frame images shooting normal stills. I could have shot a better time laps, but it would have cost me in the variety of stills I was able to shoot.

The upgrades I installed in my computer over the last week have almost doubled its processing speed, taking advantage of this new power, I’ve put together some shmancy little presentations for you. First up we have a panorama of the Kenai Mountains and Kachemak bay. Next is a simple flash slideshow with 11 select images. And finally you can enjoy the work of the time laps camera that ran throughout the evening from my porch, this comes in the form of a quicktime video file. Sit back, let this 4MB file load for a few minutes and then watch the sunset on the Kenai Mountains as the clouds roll by.

I’d like to hear comments on the time laps video, this is something new for Scott Dickerson photography. I’ve shot about 20 of them this year and unless the novelty wares off, I’ll keep doing more of them.