A new way of looking at broomweed

In the recent post about experiments in zooming I mentioned that the fountain at the Lakes Blvd. and Howard Lane hadn’t gotten turned on by 7:10 in the morning, so I left and did other things. One of the first was to see what sorts of images I could make with the disc of the rising sun reflected in a nearby pond. I used those bright reflections to silhouette a broomweed plant, Amphiachyris dracunculoides.

Here’s an unrelated thought for today: “The notion that nothing might be anything is quite something.” — S.S.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Dawn

Channeling my inner Steve Gingold, on the morning of September 4th I left home while it was still dark outside and drove to Mills Pond in Wells Branch to see what dawn might bring. The sunrise was pleasant, even if not as dramatic as what we’re used to seeing from Massachusetts. In part that’s intrinsic: Austin isn’t known for great sunrises and sunsets the way some parts of the country are. The fact that the pond is on the prairie and surrounded by a neighborhood means a photographer has no chance to get up high for a broad view that includes only natural scenery. Confronting those drawbacks, I went for a silhouetted sunrise.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

 

A new day, a new year

Let the early morning view from my computer-room window on December 3 of what is now suddenly last year serve as a welcome to this new one. A healthy and satisfying 2019 to us all.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Morro Rock

Within an hour of leaving the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery in San Simeon on November 3, we arrived at our Morro Bay hotel. It was close to the coast, so when I awoke early the next morning and saw some color in the sky, I hurriedly walked the few blocks to the water in hopes of recording the famous Morro Rock at sunrise. I think this was the only time in my life I’ve done back-to-back sunset and sunrise pictures.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Chisos Basin at dawn

On November 23rd, our last day of the Trans-Pecos trip (these travel posts aren’t sequential), we went out while it was still dark in hopes of seeing a good sunrise. Though we didn’t get a fantastic one, we did see some pleasant early-morning colors from the Chisos Mountain Basin in Big Bend National Park.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

Cattails by pond at dawn

Twice in the fall of 2014 I pulled a Steve Gingold by going out in the dark before dawn to places where I could get in position for daybreak. Last year I showed a picture from the first of those two sessions but none from the other. Here, then, on the one-year anniversary of that second dawn expedition, is a photograph taken at a pond on the eastern side of Buda, a rapidly growing town south-southwest of Austin. Cattails (Typha domingensis) stood between the water and me.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

The day with two dawns

As Phileas Fogg found to his great relief (in the form of a gain rather than a loss of £20,000), and I merely as a curiosity, travelers crossing the International Date Line from west to east gain a calendar day. For me the most recent eastward crossing of the Line took place on February 27th, which I remember as the day with two dawns. You’ve already seen pictures taken during the first one, which I lived through at Little Manly Beach on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula north of Auckland. The second dawn, shown through the safety of an airplane window and the convenience of an iPhone camera, came to me over the Pacific Ocean as we approached the California coast.

Here then, after five installments, you’ve finally reached the last of the photographs you’ll see from the great and fondly remembered New Zealand venture of 2015. Any of you who’d like to take a stroll (or more properly scroll) back through all 70 (!) of the posts about New Zealand may click here.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Rangitoto Island seen from Little Manly Beach early on the morning of February 27th

If you’d like to learn more about the extinct volcano that is Rangitoto Island, you can read the website of the Rangitoto Island Historic Conservation Trust or a Wikipedia article. And if you’d like a closer and more-abstract view of the rocks on Little Manly Beach by the dawn’s early light, just look down.

The sea now gets to lave the shore
That lava got to lave before.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: Last morning in the country

On February 27th I got up early and walked the few blocks down to Little Manly Beach, where I photographed the sun rising over the Hauraki Gulf.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

A different profile with the sun behind it

The last two posts showed the backlit profile of the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix, but now you’re seeing a different sort of profile with the sun beyond it. Move forward from September 29th outside Phoenix to October 17th inside Austin, when I pulled a Steve Gingold by being out and ready for pictures so early in the morning that it was still dark. Where, I’d asked myself, might I have a good view toward the east to photograph the sunrise, and I decided to check out the site of the former Mueller Airport, which has been undergoing redevelopment for a decade.

Now that you know the setting, you can understand that in the background of this photograph you’re seeing not a range of mountains but a pile of dirt at a construction site (though your imagination can still make a mountain out of what would have been a very large mole hill). As darkness gave way to dawn, the brightening eastern sky silhouetted this giant ragweed plant, Ambrosia trifida, that I chose as one of my subjects. If you’d like to know what a giant ragweed plant looks like when there’s light on it, you can check out a post from three years ago.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman