Tie dye Skywatch

                            Good morning

Before the rain, breaking dawn colours just ahead of sunrise. The advantage of photographing on a beach, on a small island, no light pollution to spoil the the view above and over the sea. Other skies around the world this week cam be found here

Skywatch # 91 The Isle of Man

No photo was hurt in the upload process

I would be lying if I said every day we have a sky so gloriously, spectacular and has the wow factor as this. When we do however, it is straight out with Nikonbaby and snap away until the last faltering light fades. No volcanic ash, no HDR, no "let's boost the colours up all the way to 11" in photoshop. It is what it is, a natural through the lens sky. Why would I want to spoil what nature intended into a fake? We don't always have lush sunsets, we get hundreds of grey rainy ones, I'll show you those too, but today a archive of the day we had one of best natural sunsets ever.

Other island views can be see here

For an array of skies worldwide see here

HARBOURING COLOUR - SKYWATCH

Set camera phasers to stun

All to easy to grab the pretty sunsets and sun ups when you live coastal to glean those "ooh ah stunning" comments. Well my poor little harbour has been neglected lately because of this laziness on my part. Ramsey Harbour is a wealth of colour, textures, layers and of course cranes. Am I the only one who likes a crane looming over the skyline? Possibly. A little slice of working dockside life then but how come the colours are so vivid for an industrial scene. It's all to do with your helpful little camera and it's setting, one's you may not even be aware you have. Shut up as tell us then you ask.



Obviously not all cameras from point and shoot to the big guns all singing dancing many lens ones have the same features but you might find yours has. Firstly you will need a manual setting mode switched on. Be brave try it. Next look around for these thing in your menu- sharp, vivid, saturate, etc or variations on those themes. These are different to your weather setting - cloudy, sunny, shade, etc.For this image I wanted to pick up the orange green and yellow bits and still keep the blue/lilac of the sky. For this I set the camera to vivid. This meant that the white stays white not bleaches so the clouds are white and not bleed into the colour part of the sky. The sky colour reflected in the water remains and doesn't lose out either. The hints of yellow, green and orange are picked up by the vivid mode without over egging them, just retaining the colour. As there was a slight haze I decided against using the sharp which can give harsh lines to retain the natural hazy feel to the building rooftops and the lighthouse far left keeping the sharp natural focus on the foreground. Ok there is slightly more to it than this. Seeing the scene in the first place and of course no amount of "magic buttons" on your camera can compensate for you if you know naff all about composition and chop the heads off (figuratively speaking) your nearest and dearest or can't keep a camera straight. That one's down to you.



Hoe you got all that.

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

As it's Saturday you know you are going to get as drab an image as I have to hand.always far too The realities of daylight can drastically affect an image. That said, it's also far more rewarding to challenge yourself( and you out there) to find colours in a grey world. This is the spot beneath my feet from yesterdays image. I chose not to compose the image just simply look around until I found a touch of colour on an otherwise blank grey canvas. If I wanted an arty statement image, I would have kicked the leaves and the fag butt out of shot and just kept the fruit red/orange fruit in, and applied those photography rule of the thirds to the fruit. This was the whole scene though, not tampered or stage manged. No cropping, saturation or contrast alterations. It is what it is purely an image to demonstrate that using your eyes and brain you can find dirty(the fag butt) pretty( the fruit) things (both) anywhere and using the drabbest backgrounds to really enhance those natural colours you find. It's only a photo of the path in the nature reserve. Nothing more, nothing less.


For those of you who are fascinated by the sky colours here and their intensity and are they real, they sure are. Most of the night images, usually dusk I use are taken in very secluded areas where there is no lamp light or light from building or houses, hence that nasty orange glow pollution you get which pervades the sky is omitted. The natural sky colours, especially the violet/ indigo hues are therefore so opaque and rich because of this lack of orange glow pollution. Coastal and country areas have the most amazing starry skies too due to the lack of nasty street lighting. Next time you are in the country or shooting the horizon over a coast, try dusk and around 15mins before the light fades completely. You'll be sure to get those rich violets. The same applies to dawn for those flamming orange, burnt rose and hot pinks. If you are very lucky you may even get a peculiar green tint( only about twice have even I got this) which is so spooky as it's a colour you don't associate with the sky.

Go out and capture the colours. I'm waiting!