Ah, the feeling of warm sand beneath my toes and the lapping of water against the shore…this is a sweet time of year because the sun sets early enough that I can enjoy it with my little boys. Midsummer I can’t do this without risking a couple of little grouches the next day, which of course wouldn’t be fair to Mommy.

We roamed around down by the rocks beneath the Northern Pacific bridge, watched a train cross overhead, threw a couple of rocks in the water, watched some boats go by, and then headed home for their bedtime. They love the sunset just like their Daddy…I only wish we’d remembered the frisbee!

The Sunset Song of the Day for this photo is “Down by the Sea” by Men at Work. It’s a nice, calm, meandering tune that captured the feeling of slowly padding along the shore…enjoying the golden reflection of the setting sun across the water and the brilliant blue of the overhead sky as the sunset colors waned. You can investigate the song on iTunes by clicking here.

As I’ve posted before here on the ol’ Blog, I have certain specialized playlists in my iPod for certain things like stargazing, sunrises, and sunsets. I’ve shared my Sunny Day playlist (click here) and will probably put my Stargazing list up here sometime down the road. In the mean time I thought I’d start a new feature: attaching a song to certain photos that match the mood of the song.

Today’s song is “Narwhal Aerobics” by The Nightgowns. You can check it out on iTunes by clicking here. I think it picks up the mood of this sunset, which was photographed next to a little lake along Highway 25 west of Mandan.

I got to bolt out with the cameras for a little bit on Friday evening, and my first target was the sharp display of light rays piercing the cloud cover. Of course, a photo like that deserves a nice foreground object, and I chose the Square Buttes north of town. I have a couple of spots marked in the GPS that provide a perfect vantage point of the buttes from across the Missouri River, but it takes a while to get to them. Along the way I began to sense that the clouds may be clearing slightly, diminishing those rays, so I stopped for this quick shot.

I arrived at my usual spot as planned, and by now it was obvious I had mere minutes before the clouds broke. I opted for a couple of quick roadside shots rather than a carefully planned hike, but I like what I came away with. This is the northern end of the Square Buttes, a portion that doesn’t look very square at all. I knew that there wasn’t enough time to hike to a point where I could include the wide, flat tops for which these buttes are known, so I opted for some “bumps and water” in the foreground instead.

One artifact of note is the “glow” where the hills meet the darkening sky. I originally saw this in Photoshop and thought it was an artifact of processing, as I did lighten the foreground a little bit. I thought I had been heavy-handed in that processing; however, a close inspection of the original raw photos shows that the glow on the hills was actually there. Whether it was caused by the rays somehow or the breaking cloud cover behind the hills, I don’t know.

With that, the sky cleared briefly and I had to reboot my little photo trip in search of a different type of photo. A storm rolled through shortly thereafter, but I was caught out of position and didn’t manage to capture the ominous front as it approached. Instead I returned to the garage and set out to tinker on stuff for a while, but my cameras and I returned to sunset duty on Sunday – this time with two little boys attending – and I’ll post the results of that photo dash soon.

Sticking with the Double Ditch theme for another day, I thought I’d share a nice picturesque sunset from beneath the cliffs. I had taken my little towheads down to the bottom of the walking trail to stand along the shore and throw rocks in the water, which they gladly did for as long as I’d allow before going home for story time and bedtime. On the way back I noticed that the sky had some really cool ripples and that the color of the sky was very striking, so we stopped for a second to take it in before heading home for baths, stories, stuffed animals, and blankies.

Poking around by the river bottoms a while back brought me to the right place at the right time, which I think is the most important component of a good photo. The sky was cooperating, the tree held a good pose, and it was just a fantastic moment to be out exploring with my camera.

After all the gloomy skies we’ve had lately, I’m ready for some sunshine…how about you?

Sunday night was a nice opportunity for me to dash out for a last minute photo fix, so I grabbed a friend and headed west. The sunset was approaching quickly, but I already had a foreground object in mind: Crown Butte. I know a spot which, if you have four wheel drive and aren’t afraid to get muddy, provides some fantastic sunset opportunities. I had a clean truck before this event, but now am still caked in mud. Fun on multiple levels!

The colors displayed by a North Dakota sunset are striking. They turn gold and/or red as the sun breaches the horizon, turning to wonderful pinks and purples as it wanes. The gold this evening was incredible. It also highlighted some very interesting features:

Note the corkscrew-shaped clouds traversing just above the horizon. These were quite noteworthy and a good reason to make a wide panoramic shot from multiple exposures. I set up my tripod and panned across the display, assembling several of the shots together in order to show you this wild looking formation. I’ll leave the “secret military test plane” theories to the tin foil hat crowd.

As soon as it came, the sunset departed. The golden and reddish hues had made their transition to purples and back to blue. This wide shot of the sky shows the evening sky encroaching on the bold display as night was just around the corner. Since the terrain required that I be able to see the best way to navigate through the mud, it was time for us to load up the cameras and head back in, satisfied that we’d had a successful photography outing on short notice.