Morning Pic

The sky seduced me when I opened my drapes this morning.

It was right at dawn, and changing rapidly, so I rushed around and started shooting as soon as I hit the sidewalk.

After the requisite stop at the Shell station, I hurried to the river and right away noticed the way the layered hues in the cloud bank lined up with the top of the bridge. Of course, in my rush to get into the day, I had failed to bring my tripod with me; I might have found a better shot using it.

And maybe then I would have missed the heron, which showed up as I was working the bridge. I’m not sure it was the same bird that appeared in Friday’s Morning Pic, but it acted as shy: as soon as I got in position it headed for the far bank.

I walked around to the bridge to see if I could get a closer shot, and the heron obliged by moving up on a dock piling to preen itself, albeit with its back to me. I took 19 shots of it there, plus a video (see below) -- and this is the best.

I did get a good look at the sky and river from both sides of the bridge.

I was focused more on the river in taking this one. I think those are pigeons in the upper right.

The sky wasn’t done thrilling me though. I turned to head back to the park, ready to sit down a spell, and a rainbow had dropped out of the clouds. I chased it into town, instead of going to the park.

When I did reach the park, the sun climbed out of the clouds, and we ended up with a lot of blue sky, a rare sight in the Grays Harbor winter, which is soon to arrive.

Photo Notes

I’ve started reading Idiot’s Guides: Digital Photography, by Shawn Frederick. It turns out the Canon ELPH 180 doesn’t give me control of two fundamental settings, the shutter speed and aperture setting, at least not directly. It does tell me what those are for each photo, and gives me settings I can play with to influence them indirectly. It’s something to play with going forward, but for now I’ve decided to set the camera on automatic and just point and shoot. The camera does a really good job of focusing for me, if I give it time to work; and I’ve noticed a big difference in clarity.

There’s also a lot of editing that can be done after the photo is taken, on the computer. The last rainbow pic was adjusted to bring out the color more, and I had fun playing with the cropping on the photo I took just out my front door. I felt like I could make it more expressive, just by selecting what I framed and showed from the image.

And finally…

… 30 seconds of the heron playing hard to get. Happy Sunday!