The joy of a glorious sunset

I have had a fascination with sunrises and sunsets for much of my adult life. Maybe it stems from being a painter in my younger years, maybe it's the love of nature instilled in me as a child or maybe it's just because they're pretty. Lately, I have taken quite a few pictures of the sunset near where I live. A local company even asked to use this matted one on its website.

I never consciously think "Oh, it's about time for sunset; let me go see." What happens is that I will be walking from one part of my condo to the other and I'll catch a glimpse of color out of a window. I stop long enough to think about whether I'm wearing appropriate clothing to go outside in (because I often sit around the house in garb that is not appropriate to go outside in), then grab the camera and run out the door. Unfortunately, by the time I clear my building and get far enough down the street to get a good shot, most of the light and the best color of the sunset is gone, but I've still been able to get some nice shots.

Back when I was a regular visitor to this area and not yet a resident, I used to love to go to Lake Gerar (what I call "the pond") and write poetry or journal. For years, my favorite sunset picture was this one that I took there. The thing I loved about the pond is that it, though it was just steps from the beach, while you were sitting there soaking up the peace of the place, it felt like some sort of private retreat.

This one was taken from the patio of my apartment in Alexandria, VA where I lived for many years. I still get a little homesick when I see that skyline--I saw it daily for 32 years!

The one on the right was taken on Amelia Island in Florida at the fishing pier near Brett's Waterway Cafe, an excellent restaurant where I had my birthday dinner in 2006.

I am a big fan of the website Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/), a free photo-sharing website. You can go on there and search for just about any thing or any place in the world and find that someone has taken pictures of it. There are some amazingly talented photographers on Flickr. However, one trend in photography that I see there a lot which saddens me is all the digital trickery that is performed on photographs to make them look extra special, extra vivid, extra colorful, etc. To me, they end up looking surreal and, while they are often beautiful, they also look fake. I hate to get all sappy here, but I think God does a pretty good job of making sunsets (and just about everything else) beautiful without having to fiddle with it. As a result, none of my sunset photos are digitally enhanced in any way. I like to remember the real thing--the way I saw it with my own eyes. That's pretty special all by itself.