Stay Just A Little Longer

I work the evening shift Monday through Friday, so almost all my photography is done on the weekends.  I try to make it a point to go shooting every Sunday whether I feel like it or not.  Fortunately, most times I feel like it.

This Sunday I did not.

I often rent a wide angle lens because the majority of what I do is landscape photos and that wide angle lends a sense of drama to landscape shots.  The 35mm and 50mm that I own are too narrow for my taste, especially on the crop sensor of the D7000.  The local camera store near my house has a 12-24mm that I will try to rent each Saturday after 1:00 pm because then I can get it half off.  I stopped by on Saturday at 2:30.  The rental book showed that someone had already rented the lens...for half off.  Someone had beat me by less than two hours.  I tried not to be bummed out about it, convincing myself that it was going to be a lousy weekend to shoot landscapes anyway because the clouds for the most part had been the flat, boring kind that just make you want to sleep in on cold winter mornings.

But Sunday came, and I convinced myself to go shooting again.  Actually, it was probably more Rain that did the convincing.  The weekends are when I get to spend the bulk of my time with her outside.  So I thought that since I'm going to be outside anyway, I might as well bring my camera along.  After tiring Rain out a little at the park, we headed down to the nearby lake to see if there was anything interesting to shoot.  I didn't have my hopes up because the clouds still were the same clouds from Saturday.  We walked around the park for a bit, Rain sniffing every rock she came across, and me looking around for promising shots (and scolding Rain for always pulling on the leash).  After trying several shots, I settled on staying for the sunset and doing long exposure shots of the water and the mountain range.

About 10 shots in, I was ready to call it quits.  I had already spent well over an hour at the lake.  The clouds weren't budging, it was getting colder, and Rain kept on whining because I had tied her leash to a nearby post.  But as I put away my tri-pod, I looked across the mountain range at the slight orange glow that was just fighting to get through the clouds.  It took me moment, but I decided that I should wait a couple more minutes to see if anything would happen.

Rain hates being tied up.

And I'm sure glad I did.  The sunset was absolutely beautiful.  The clouds started to open up a little, and the clouds closest to me started to light up a bright yellowish orange color while the clouds behind them caught a bluish purple hue.  The edges of the mountains glowed a bright orange, but what was most amazing was the water.  The lake had turned into a rippling, golden-orange, beautiful mess that really looked like something out of a dream.

It lasted maybe 8 minutes at the most.  Just a fleeting moment, but it was a sunset that I'll remember for a while.

I'm glad I decided to stick it out just a little bit longer.  It made all the difference.

This was a two exposure shot.  The sky was around 1/10 of a second while the water was captured using a ND filter and setting the shutter speed at 20-25 seconds.  I had to boost the colors in post because the RAW files always come out dull.  Even then, I think the colors of the actual sunset were even more vibrant than this image.