Since I get up VERY early, I have the cameras, a Canon 7D MKI with a 17-55 f/2.8 lens and a 7D MKII with a 100-400 f/5.6 lens, usually with a 1.4x teleconverter on, ready to go in the laundry room which opens out to the side porch. I have an unobstructed view (well, except for a power pole and wires) of the Peloncillos, the mountain range in New Mexico immediately to the east, and I wait for the sun to rise. Meanwhile, I look at the sky for a pre-dawn cloud display --
Lately it's been in the 80's, and the clouds have been a bit sparse, but we're finally going into a weather change -- and that means clouds. And it's windy way up there, though not on the ground, so the clouds are even more spectacular. I then check the view from behind my garage, looking to the west to Cave Creek Canyon, and check out the pre-sunrise view. This morning it's another good one --
Sunrise itself wimps out a bit, so I concentrate on the sunrise colors on the west's surrounding peaks. Sometimes there is a phenomenon called "The Red Glow", and it's on full display just after sunrise --
These are some of the rock formations on Silver Peak; I used my 500 f/4 lens with the 1.4x TC on,which gives me a focal length of 700mm. The 500 is my "go-to" bird lens, because it's a prime (it's just 500mm, not a telephoto lens that can be zoomed in and out) and its photos have superior quality to a standard zoom lens. I sometimes use it as a landscape lens -- and here are the results. The rising sun is causing the the heights of Portal Peak to glow, too --
This is the REAL Portal Peak, as opposed False Portal Peak, a name given to the peak prominent over the community of Portal and surrounding area; it has no official name. The sun as it rises hits the peaks further in Cave Creek Canyon --
Again, using my 500mm lens. It's heavy -- about 10 pounds, and with the camera body and teleconverter on more like 12 pounds -- so I rest it on a deck railing to "save my arms" from holding its weight. After breakfast I go to the house I'm keeping watch over, and watering its plants and refilling the bird feeders. It belongs to Mark and Lori, who also used to live in the South Bay of Los Angeles and retired to Portal around the same time I bought Faranuf. During my 2 months here we've become good friends, and since they're in Guyana on a birding trip I volunteered to keep an eye on their place. After spending some time there I come back to Faranuf and engage in fruitlessly micro-adjusting my 500mm lens. I use a computer program called FoCal; you hook up your camera and lens to the computer, run the program, and -- presto! -- it tells you what settings to use which will give you the sharpest picture; then you go into your camera menu and set the micro adjustment setting to what the FoCal program said was the best. But things have to be JUST SO to get the correct setting, and the tripod I have the camera and lens on doesn't cooperate, and I give up. I really didn't need to do it for the 500, anyways; it just came back from the service factory where they cleaned and adjusted it. During this time I've been checking and refilling my bird feeders, and check on the Patchnose snake's burrow, too. The hole is -- covered with dirt; it appears to have been abandoned. I guess he's moved on -- rats! Or, heaven forbid, something could have "got" him; I saw a Roadrunner in the front yard earlier -- Roadrunners eat snakes. Nah, that couldn't have been it...
Sunset is the equal to the sunrise -- surpasses it, actually. The weather is changing, so there are more clouds, which for starters created "angel rays" from the sun going behind Silver Peak --
The skies to the east and northeast get more pink as the sun sets --
Sunset isn't as impressive to the west, so I set my 500mm lens on a deck railing and take a photo of one of Cave Creek Canyon's rock faces with the sunset colors behind it. You can see the trees lining the silhouette --
It was a "quieter" day than the more recent ones, but nothing wrong with that...
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