As summer solstice approaches, we are in the full throes of Alaskan daylight. The sun drops below the mountains just before midnight, but it is only just out of sight. The world is cast into a long twilight, negating the need for flashlights unless traveling into the cover of the woods.

The sun rises again around 4am, and always seems high overhead throughout the day.

Driving home one night last week after dinner with friends, I was inspired by the setting sun to drive past our house and continue another 10 miles down the road to the Anchor Point Beach. First, we stopped at the Baycrest overlook, just outside of Homer.

At Anchor Point, the sun set close to the currently active and obviously smoking volcano, Mt. Redoubt

Even after the sun disappeared, the beach continued to reflect the sky.

And finally:

Photography Alaska, Photography, Sunset, Volcanoes

I’ve started taking pictures again, after a couple weeks off. There have been too many good scenes to resist!

First, a moonset and sunrise. Both of these images were created using an HDR plugin for Aperture, made by HDRsoft. I take multiple exposures of the same scene, and use the plugin to combine them into one superphoto, and then tweak the settings until I get a satisfactory image.

Before sunrise, the crescent moon was hanging over the mountains, surrounded by purple sky. This photo consists of 3 separate exposures.

Then, the sunrise began. This photo was made from 6 separate exposures.

It was foggy most of the day Wednesday, and the resulting moisture froze overnight, leaving a coating of ice over everything.

As I was preparing to feed the dogs last night, the sky lit up with one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve seen here. We’re on the downward slope of an east-facing hill, so we missed the full effect, but here’s what I could capture.

Too bad we don’t have a more scenic foreground, but it’ll do for now.

Photography Alaska, Ice, Photography, Sunrise, Sunset

The temperature has been above freezing here for the past few days. That knee-deep snow has melted down to just over ankle-deep. Where we walk has been compressed into slick ice.

Most of the day we were in fog, with the sun behind the clouds. Around 3, about an hour before sunset, the sun broke through and lit up the fog for us.

A couple of hours later, well after the sun had disappeared, I stepped outside to get a photo of the lingering colors. The two dots of light in the sky are Venus and Jupiter.

The moon is about 3/4 full, and already provides a lot of illumination at night, especially reflecting off the snow/ice cover. This shot it lit entirely be moonlight.

The boss let me borrow her reflector telescope, and I spent a portion of the evening figuring out how the thing works. I’m going to have to wait for daylight to get it focused properly, and I might have to recalibrate the mirror alignment. I’m hoping to find a camera adapter for it, so I can try out some astrophotography!

Home, Photography Photography, Sunset

Several times today, I would look up at the sun, drop whatever I was doing, and run to get my camera. This morning, I had just pulled the food sled (that’s the plastic sled we put three 5-gallon buckets of dog food onto, and drag around the dog yard so we don’t have to carry all that weight) into the yard, when I saw this oddity. The clouds created a band just over the sun, so that I could look directly at it, but not below or above it. It was this faint, glowing orb, on a bed of unbearably bright light. By the time I sprinted over to the cabin to get the camera, thicker clouds had moved in (that’s how fast they were going!), but here’s what I got. That little ball above the bright clouds is our sun.

After I finished in the yard, I figured I might as well shoot some of the ice that’s formed on the plants, since I had my telephoto/macro lens on already.

This evening…wait, 3:30 isn’t the evening. This afternoon, when taking Ashlee and Macgee out for their potty break, the sun was setting behind the same layer of thin clouds.

Home, Photography Alaska, Photography, Snow, Sunset

We live on the southeast face of a hill, so we don’t get to see the sun set. By the time the sky turns colors, the sun is already gone, and we’re in shadow. But tonight the mountains turned colors, so I had to get out my camera and feed my addiction. The bay was totally covered with clouds, and they started to creep uphill as I was setting up the tripod.

First, the dog yard:

Now, the mountains to the south:

Then, due east:

Now to the northeast:

I managed to switch to my telephoto before the mountains stopped being pretty(er):

Photography Alaska, Mountains, Photography, Sunset