Just a couple of additions from early this morning – the Estate Find posts are written a day or two beforehand so I can keep to my schedule, but this morning had good conditions so I extended it a bit.
I woke up a little before sunrise, when I really should be waking up but I’m usually up too late the night before (or earlier that same morning,) so it often doesn’t happen. But I looked out at the clear sky and knew I had to do something, and as the sun began climbing from beneath the horizon, the first opportunity presented itself.
As much as this looks like something from the early spring, this is the sun just catching the ice-covered top branches of an American sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua,) and I realize as I insert this that it’s “LiquidambAr” and not “LiquidambEr” as I’ve probably typed it before, so ignore all the previous incorrect renderings of the scientific name. The sunlight was only this orange for a few minutes and went through yellow to white pretty quickly. I did a bunch of upper-branch photos as it progressed, and even tried to frame the half (“third-quarter”) moon in with the glittering ice, but the sun angle wasn’t optimal to produce that and all I got were a couple of faint sparkles. But as I was getting breakfast, a thought occurred to me before I’d gotten too far, and staged a simple photo:
The breeze, which didn’t even feel present, was just a hair too strong most of the time and the steam from my tea was laying out almost horizontally, but I was ready when it shifted. Came out well for a spur of the moment composition.
The one I really like, however, is this one:
This is only a tight crop of a larger frame, with no other editing – the colors really were like this. You just have to find the right angle, and shoot at a small aperture to get the starbursts, of course. This’ll be a print soon.