Looking up at Hopewell Rocks
You’ve already seen picturesque rocks and peeling tree trunks from Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick, on June 7th. At one point I looked up from the shore there and saw this prismatic band running across the clouds.
© 2018 Steven Schwartzman
One of these bands showed up here on Saturday afternoon. It was the most vivid I’ve seen and, like this one, beautiful. It’s neat that you were able to catch the almost invisible cirrus clouds that provided the canvas for the color.
I was running a short errand when I saw the one here, and didn’t have my camera with me, so I was surprised when a local reader of my blog showed up in my comment section yesterday and asked, “Say — did you happen to see that cool rainbow-like thing yesterday afternoon?”
shoreacres
July 16, 2018 at 7:35 AM
Yes, I lucked out with the combination of cloud types, especially the cirrus.
What a coincidence that a local reader of yours saw “that cool rainbow-like thing” that you’d also seen. Do you know whether that reader managed to photograph it?
Occasionally the ubiquitous smart phone will do, but other times it’s not good enough. Eve encourages me to bring my camera bag along even when we’re going somewhere where I’m unlikely to want to take pictures. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Yesterday was a don’t, when we passed a group of vultures. Fortunately we were only a couple of miles from home, so I retrieved my camera bag and found the vultures still there when I made it back to the place where we’d seen them.
Steve Schwartzman
July 16, 2018 at 10:02 AM
She did manage a couple of photos with her phone. For some reason the colors in her photos are less intense than when I saw it, but any number of things could account for that.
We live so close (she’s on the other side of the lighthouse) that we often end up making photos of the same clouds, sunsets, and so on. It’s great fun to compare notes.
shoreacres
July 18, 2018 at 7:11 PM
Thanks for your link to those two pictures. As you say, lots of things could account for differences in how the two of you perceived the phenomenon, including whether the blog versions of the photographs accurately display what she saw. I didn’t know the two of you live so close to each other; that can definitely make for interesting comparisons.
Steve Schwartzman
July 19, 2018 at 3:19 PM
Your photograph is lovely, a happiness to see, reminding me of the one time I saw such a thing over Port Gardner in Everett WA on 07/07/2017. Days later, looking for something else, I went to a site about which shoreacres had taught her readers, and came across what appears to be the same phenomenon: https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/july-2017/
I very much enjoy your photographs, and hers; and thank you both.
Grateful Reader
July 16, 2018 at 10:20 AM
Thanks for your comment and for your link to the article about what I now see is called a circumhorizon arc (which for lack of the correct terminology I called a prismatic band). A few pictures of that phenomenon came as a welcome and unanticipated bonus from my visit to photograph the geology at Hopewell Rocks.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the photographs you see here and on the two blogs that shoreacres publishes.
Steve Schwartzman
July 16, 2018 at 10:46 AM
Your photo proves the point that it is always worth looking up.
melissabluefineart
July 16, 2018 at 12:26 PM
Right you are. Things were looking up.
Steve Schwartzman
July 16, 2018 at 1:06 PM
Wow awesome!
bayphotosbydonna
July 16, 2018 at 8:59 PM
True, a rare and welcome sight.
Steve Schwartzman
July 16, 2018 at 9:05 PM
I am always amazed at what we can see either looking up, or down… or to the right or left. Something grand or exceptional can be missed in the blink of an eye!
Littlesundog
July 19, 2018 at 3:05 PM
And because as we walk along we can’t look in all possible directions, I’ve come to accept as an article of faith that I must have missed many worthy things in my rambles in nature. One experience I’ve had a bunch of times serves as a confirmation of that. From time to time I return from a jaunt into nature along the same path I followed on my way out, and sometimes on the way back I’ve noticed something I’d walked right past without seeing it the first time. Occasionally it’s even been something prominent right at the edge of the path.
Steve Schwartzman
July 19, 2018 at 3:12 PM
I’ve had that happen too. Even picking cockleburs (I’m back at it this year) – I walk one direction and go back from where I came and find all sorts of plants I missed! Just goes to show sometimes it’s about looking at something from a different angle or light.
Littlesundog
July 19, 2018 at 6:34 PM
Agreed: an alternate perspective can make a big difference.
Steve Schwartzman
July 19, 2018 at 7:15 PM