Low Hanging Fruit: a solitary sunset

So remember how I said Wednesday's sunset was epic? Well maybe that was a bit of an overstatement. It was pretty good but nothing like Friday's sunset. Yep, Friday's show was one for the ages. Epic of epic proportions, if that makes sense. Strong central clouds that dominated the sky as they were lit by the finals rays of the sun were supported by plenty of soft accent clouds to fill the remaining sky. I couldn't have scripted it better, except for the fact it all happened over Winters and Lake Berryessa while I was stuck in Davis where 90% of the sky was clear.

Knowing that the show was going to happen in only a small part of the sky I headed south of town where I knew of a few solitary trees far enough off the road to be able to use a longer lens and fill the photo with as much of the sunset as I could capture. My original thought was a valley oak near the south putah levee. But when I arrived a second tree a few hundred yards away caught my eye. I'd always liked the position of the tree, with a vast, uncluttered view behind it, but didn't care for the tree itself when it had its leaves. Now in its winter bones it looked much more photogenic.

The colors in that photo don't do justice to the real thing but my photoshop color manipulation skills aren't the best.

While the long lens helped condense the tree and clouds into a nice little package it didn't really convey my mood about this sunset. The real beauty of it seemed distant, out of reach. So I put a standard 50mm lens on the camera and recomposed.

This photo is more like the feeling this sunset gave me. The tree and I (as the viewer of this image) alone with a thin ribbon of distant color in an otherwise dark and empty sky and landscape. Not that I feel alone in life. With Abby and Miranda I've never felt more loved. Just that this particular sunset was more someone's else's to enjoy and I was only allowed a peek of what could have been had I been standing atop one of the Vaca hills.

Not wanting to end on such a downer I tried a little positive use of negative space. This was the view looking south of the hills where there were no clouds either.