Jaci Dawn

We rarely have sunsets here. At least, not the kind of drop-dead gorgeous sunsets you get in the high desert. I am not sure why we don’t get the sunsets, but I believe it has something to do with the lack of mountains to the west of us and the way the sunlight refracts off of the clouds. (I am, of course, referring to days when there is 1. a sun out and 2. a few evening clouds. Otherwise the explanation is very simple: there’s no sunset on overcast grey days when the sun never came out to play in the first place.)

Tonight was one of those rare evenings when there was a brief play of pink light on the low western clouds.

So I grabbed my camera and tried to capture it from our back yard (without including power lines or neighboring houses). I ended up with one good photo.

I framed the sunset behind the drooping sunflower heads and dropped as low as I could (there’s a fence there) so that all you can see of the neighbor’s house is the bit of roof peak.

I cropped and enlarged that, but I’m not convinced that was a better composition.

I played a little with photo shop and set the sky on fire. Now that is rather cool.

But that’s when I realized my lens was dirty. There’s a smudge running at an angle from the sunflower head right through the wispy yellow cloud. Isn’t that special?

Note to self: make sure your lens is clean. There’s no way to retake ruined sunset photos.

(photo 79/365)

P.S. There is a range of mountains to the west of us. the Coast Range. It’s an old range and low, and you can’t see it from where I live. Mary’s Peak is the tallest peak at 4,097 feet (1248 meters). Hardly a mountain at all compared to the Cascades immediately to the east of us. Mt. Hood is 11,249 feet (3,429 meters)