Birches and their Neighbors - Day 31

Janus in the Birches  

Looking Ahead and Looking Behind    

- Much can be observed by looking backwards at a sunrise     

Janus, the Roman god of transitions, and especially the god of the New Year, is depicted as a two-headed figure who is able to look in two directions: to where we have come from - the past - and also to where we are going - the future. Janus is able to act appropriately in the present - now - because of being able to see both ahead and behind.
Similarly, I think, while I can get lovely sunrise photos by shooting in the direction of the sun, sometimes I can make even more telling photographs by observing the effects of that sunrise on my surroundings. These effects include capturing opposites like complementary colors in shadows, and revealing objects not in the image by the absence of the light they are blocking, and by enjoying the overall glow of the atmosphere.

And so with the New Year. Here's to Janus in the Birches, looking backwards at 2013, and looking forward to 2014. Best wishes from here for a Happy New Year!

Birches and their Neighbors - Day 30

Sunrise Light and Color 

This is the jpg - 99KB

This is the png8 - 204KB

Testing Blogger's Color Rendition   

- checking out the differences   

I wanted to check again the differences between Blogger's rendition of a jpg version of a photograph and the png version. This photo was taken at the same time as Day 15's photograph, which lost its intense darks to some rather pretty blue-violet tones, when it showed up in the blog.
I anticipate similar color-shifting on the jpg, and none on the png. Let's see!

Birches and their Neighbors - Day 26

Sunrise Contrasting Colors

WHAAA'  ???  Here's the photo as an optimized .jpg.  Changes that happened after importing to Blogger included pixelization and color shifts.

Here's the same photo saved as a .png-8. It's almost identical to original. Blogger, what happened? 

Lights at Sunrise 

- and the colors they produce 

There are two light sources in this photo - one, the rising sun bouncing through the clouds in the eastern sky, and the other, the artificial light on the building behind the trees.
To our eyes, the areas where the light does not strike show up as complementary colors to the light - in this case intense blue-violet against intense orange-yellow.
The artificial light merely serves as an accent to the colors the sun produces.

Birches and their Neighbors - Day 23

Striped Clouds at Sunrise

Striped Bands of Clouds  

- and vertical bands of trees  

What's not to like about the colors of a sunrise through bands of clouds, back-lighting the vertical stateliness of birches and aspens and the elegant tendrils of last summer's tree flowers?

Birches and their Neighbors - Day 18

Winter Dawn Spectrum

Sunrise Spectrum  

- a full range of colors from a prism of clouds  

This morning there was a full range of color in the sunrise - deep blue in the unlit sky, then pinks, violets, a brief intense red-orange, a suggestion of yellow, and a rather rare occurrence, several stripes of green in the clouds above and to the side of the rising sun.