Landscape – Page 55 – Michael Stephen Wills Photography

Anatomy of Dawn

Subcategories of Twilight and more

March 4, 2022March 2, 2022 MichaelStephenWills11 Comments

Use your pinky finger to apprehend the sky dome. Imagine yourself at sea, out of sight of land, on a calm day. Keeping your arm extended, place your pinky-tip on the horizon due east, raise your arm directly overhead. The average sized pinky-tip will have spanned 90 of its lengths. The distance measured from the horizon to directly overhead, the zenith, is 90 degrees of sky dome, about one pinky-width per degree, one-fourth of the entire 360 degrees of sky around your spot on the globe.

The apparent width of the sun disk from earth covers 1/2 degree of sky dome. The disk center point moves 15 degrees per hour (360/24 = 15). Using these facts to estimate time to sunset is relatively straightforward. Estimating time to dawn from the sky is more difficult. This graphic, “Twilight-dawn subcategories,” is a way to grasping what happens. Your position on the earth globe affects the experience. For example, at northern latitudes above 60°34′ summer nights never become darker than civil twilight because the sun’s midpoint never drops lower than 6 degrees below the horizon. Civil twilight lasts all night long summer times in parts of Sweden and Finland.

Attribution: “Pmurph5, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia “

The date-time stamp on the first photograph of this series is 6:46:23 am, Cocoa Beach sunrise for February 1st was 7:09:40, 00:23:17, 23.283 minutes in decimal notation, later. This duration divided by 60 minutes in an hour and multiplied by the sun’s apparent velocity across the sky (15 degrees per hour) and minus the .25 degree between sun’s center and disk edge, gives the sun’s center as 5.57 degrees below the horizon: this is a photograph of the sky a minute or so after the sun passed civil dawn into civil twilight. I am not more exact because this calculation does not account the deviation of the sun path from due east at this latitude, lengthening civil twilight duration by almost a minute.

Edge of Civil Twilight: dark clouds soon to take light

The following photograph is time-stamped 7:05:06, 4.567 minutes until sunrise, sun center is just below the horizon, setting the dark clouds of the previous photograph fleetingly on fire.

Sunrise has passed in the following photographs, obscured by clouds and making for a great light show. Enjoy!!

References

“Dawn” Wikipedia page, the graphic “Twilight-dawn subcategories,” and the descriptions of subcategories came from this page.

Copyright 2022 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

The Thaw at Taughannock Falls

A Friday Evening Stroll through a February Thaw

March 2, 2022February 23, 2022 MichaelStephenWills26 Comments

Pam and I were drawn outside the day after Valentine’s a bit of sun, an unreliable warm breeze, a promise of exercise. Our expectations were disappointed for all but the last at the foot of the Taughannock Falls gorge trail.

We had a reminder mid-February marks the start of avian mating behavior with this addition to the view from Taughannock Creek, the first large waterfall. For the cold, drizzly excursion I chose the IPhone, in a waterproof case, for the images. The fanicful birdhouse inscription reads “The Old Birds from Pa.”

Click the photograph for my “Finger Lakes Memories” Online gallery.

The winding gorge takes a general east, southeasterly direction. Where the sun cannot reach the snow was reduced to a treacherous slushy ice mix more nasty than dangerous.

View from the Overlook on the way to the trail. This is the endpoint of our hike, viewed from the gorge rim.

Of all the area hiking experiences, Taughannock Gorge Trail is the only one available year round. The gorge is wide with enough room for the footpath to avoid the cliff edge. Today, there were places were ice formations were throwing large ice chunks down the slope. The park ranges place tree trunks along the cliff base, with warning signs to stay away. Still, there are visitors who stray too close with fatal outcomes reported by local news.

Pam was fascinated by the appearance of snow and ice accumulated on the talus, here seen from the Taughannock Falls viewing bridge.

Click photograph for my “Finger Lakes Memories” online gallery. Photo by Pam.

You can just pick out the viewing bridge in the Falls Overlook video.

Taughannock Falls bound by ice is a most dramatic sight. I need to post photographs from a 2005 visit during an especially frigid February. Here, the falls have thrown off the ice, leaving this house-size chunk.

Click photograph for my “Finger Lakes Memories” Online Gallery

The surrounding gorge walls are continually frost coated by the mist.

https://videopress.com/v/Q698as0j?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

210 foot Taughannock Falls from the viewing bridge.

In more clement seasons the Gorge Trail ends much closer to the falls. Today, it was closed as, during winter and especially thaws, blocks of the sandstone cap break away to fall with great force across that part of the trail. This viewing area is visible in the Falls Overlook video.

Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Winter Captures

two captures during a time of lengthening days to welcome March 2022

March 1, 2022February 23, 2022 MichaelStephenWills15 Comments

Here are two offerings from winters past.

Click this link for my Fine Art Gallery

Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Rosy Fingers of Dawn

Iliad and Odyssey reference for Monday

February 28, 2022February 22, 2022 MichaelStephenWills5 Comments

A portent of new beginnings in an ongoing journey for the last day of February, 2022

Copyright 2022 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Above Muirthemne Plain

Romance of Ruins

February 26, 2022February 21, 2022 MichaelStephenWills10 Comments

This series of posts started with “Proleek, Grandfather McCardle’s home” where we explored the site of great grandfather James McCardle’s Proleek farm. A kilometer from there, at Proleek Dolmen, the ancient portal stones line up to face the plain rising to Slieve Gullion, a name for the mountain taken from the Irish, Sliabh gCuillinn, meaning “mountain of the steep slope” or Sliabh Cuilinn, “Culann’s mountain.”

Click photograph to view my Ireland photography gallery

There is an connection between Proleek and Slieve Gullion. Cycles of Irish Myth place a boy named Sétanta living on Muirthemne Plain, of which what we call Proleek Townland was a part. One day, the king Conchobar was passing his kingdom, Muirthemne, on the way to a feast on the slopes of Slieve Gullion hosted by the blacksmith Culann when he stopped to watch boys playing hurling, Sétanta among them (it is ironic the Proleek Dolmen is surrounded by a golf course in modern times).

Impressed by the Sétanta’s skill, the king invites him to the feast. Having a game to finish Sétanta promises to follow. As evening falls the boy approaches the smith’s house to find himself attacked by a huge, aggressive dog. Acting in the moment, Sétanta dispatches the dog with the hurley and ball he had at hand, driving the ball down the hound’s throat. (In another version he smashes the hound against a standing stone.)

Feeling Culann mourn the loss of his beloved animal, Sétanta promises to raise and train a guard dog equal to the one he slew. Until that time he also pledged to guard Culann’s home. From that time Sétanta was known as “the hound of Cullann”, Cú Chulainn in Irish.

References

Wikipedia articles “Slieve Gullion” “Cú Chulainn” and “Conaille Muirtheimne.”

Copyright 2022 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Lady Feeding Gulls, Cocoa Beach Dawn

unflappable lady hand feeds seagulls

February 25, 2022July 16, 2025 MichaelStephenWills22 Comments

When Pam read my post “Black Skimmers Feeding” she asked, “Where is the photo of resting Skimmers?”

To answer her question, I looked through Cocoa Beach photographs and discovered I did NOT capture the Skimmers resting. Instead, here are a related species, the Royal Tern (scientific name: Thalasseus maximus), whose behavior is similar in that it exclusively feeds from the water. There was a wind that morning and these individuals face into it. These birds are, from a human point of view, well behaved, unlike the opportunistic gull.

I searched around the web for identification of this gull without success.

Scavenging Gull – CLICK ME for more Florida photography.

It dines on a dead fish washed up by the surf. In my previous posting I used the word “grifting” to describe gull behavior, again this is from the human point of view. Gulls are notorious for stealing food from unwary beach goers, brazening walking over to unguarded chips (any kind), for instance, grabbing them and flying off. If the chip stash is large, this sets off a nasty feeding frenzy when tens of gulls swoop in and grab.

Here is a series of photographs, demonstrating this behavior.

Click Me for more Florida photos from my IStock offerings.
The dawn flowed over Cocoa Beach as a lady attracted a crowd of hungry gulls, reminiscent of scenes from Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”