Golden light

Golden light, Cape Fear River © Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Cloudscape

Cloudscape over Cape Fear River © Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Storm clouds over Cape Fear River

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Pelican, Carolina Beach

Pelican against a backdrop of storm clouds at Carolina Beach

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Siberian squill

One of my favorite little spring flowers is Scilla siberica ‘Spring Beauty’—also known as Spring Beauty scilla, Wood squill or Siberian squill (Liliaceae family). Tiny and delicate bright porcelain blue flowers grow on 4-6 inch stalks from bulbs in early spring in full sun to part shade. Tough and extremely cold hardy (Zones 2-8), this low-maintenance plant naturalizes easily by bulb offshoots and through self-seeding.

It was a spectacular spring day and there were lots of walkers, joggers and picnickers at Green Spring Gardens this afternoon, as well as plenty of spring blooms to shoot. Stay tuned for more new images!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Sue’s spectacular sunrise

On our last night on the long road from San Antonio to Virginia, we spent the night with our friends, Sue and Steve, in Huntsville, AL. We arrived at Sue’s house at almost midnight and set the alarm to get up by 6:30. I really didn’t want to get out of that comfortable bed, but when I caught a glimpse of this gorgeous pink and yellow sunrise from the guest room window, I was propelled out of bed to get this shot. Who needs sleep when there are scenes to record like this?

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Lake Lavon

I shot this image of a part of Lake Lavon as we were leaving my younger sister’s home in Wylie, TX on Tuesday morning, en route from San Antonio back to Virginia. Despite recent rains, the lake is still 12 feet below normal. At its deepest, the lake is only 40-45 feet deep. The North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD) receives raw water supplies from Lavon Lake, Jim Chapman Lake, Lake Texoma, Lake Tawakoni, and Lake Bonham for treatment and distribution to the region served. The North Texas Municipal Water District serves hundreds of thousands of North Texans. Learn more about the effects of drought on Lake Lavon here.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Austin sky

I know I’ve said it, but I’ll say it again (and again): Texas (at least for this cloud-crazed photographer) remains undefeated for stellar sky displays, hands down. There’s an amazing show virtually every day!

Photographed overlooking downtown Austin, 1.04.2012

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Self portrait, Texas sky

Photograph taken near the town of Poth in Wilson County, Texas

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Bowtie sky

Originally posted 3.31.2009. While preparing for my photography exhibit, I came across this photo in my archives and thought I’d share it again. This image was shot off of I-95, just a few miles from home. As my regular visitors may have noticed, I am quite fond of photographing skies. Images like this are the reason that I always carry a Nikon Coolpix with me. I can’t always carry my pro gear on my daily jaunts, but the quality I get from this point-n-shoot is great!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Brrrrrrrr…Yellowstone in winter

So cold your camera will stick to your cheek (the ones on your face)!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

The sky is ablaze and all I have is Michael’s iphone and we’re in an ugly strip mall parking lot.

Such is life…but it was such a spectacular sky that I simply had to share this image I shot last weekend. And no, the color was not enhanced in Photoshop! We thought about driving back home (just a few miles away), but after I shot this image, the sky started changing quickly and the opportunities waned. Just picture mountains and saquaro cactus silhouetted against this awesome sky. Sometimes ya gotta work with what ya have and shoot where you are.

Saturday sky

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Monday sky

Beauty can even be found in a strip mall parking lot!

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Congratulations, Tina & Tom!

I photographed Tina Fifer and Tom Hamblin’s wedding this past Saturday, October 8, at Kurtz Beach in Pasadena, MD, with the assistance of my friend Ed Fagan, a veteran wedding photographer. The wedding site was great (a gazebo on the deck overlooking the Chesapeake Bay), and the reception was held in the Bay Room, a light-filled banquet hall. The weather was beyond amazing—around 78 degrees or so! The happy couple are on their island cruise honeymoon now while Ed and I begin the lengthy sorting and preparation of hundreds and hundreds of photos. More to come…

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Shell Lake, Wisconsin

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Last night’s sky…

…courtesy of Michael’s iPhone (always work with what you have!)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Hallelujah light over the Blue Ridge Mountains

Day trip 8.8.2011, going south on Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, lovely weather (especially for August!), lovely sky (dramatic cloud formations and rays of light), and lovely company (Michael’s nephew Sean and his wife, Anna—visiting from Columbus, Ohio)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Every cloud has a silver lining…

Yes, more clouds! Want to know where that expression comes from? Check this site out here.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Wide open spaces…

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Windmill in hallelujah light

I photographed this windmill in Bulverde, Texas yesterday. My sister and I were out scouting for locations for me to photograph those wonderful cloud-filled vistas found only in Texas!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Texas sky

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Georgia sky

I shot this landscape last August when I was visiting my friend Carmen in South Carolina. We were visiting her sister-in-law and nephew and his wife on their farm in Commerce, Georgia.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Tall Bearded Iris ‘Indian Chief’

I’m pretty confident in my identification of these flowers after seeing this one here. I photographed these beauties in a garden located between the original Vienna Library, which is now a museum (circa 1897, relocated to its current location in 1970) and the Freeman House Store & Museum in Vienna, VA. The Freeman House has served as a residence, store, Civil War hospital, railroad station, post office and fire department, and is now a museum and general store. The little L-shaped garden was ablaze in color with Bearded Iris, Poppy, Salvia and Foxglove blooms. The overcast and slightly drizzly weather made for perfect photographic conditions—saturated color and glorious raindrops on petals!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Sunset + (super?)moonrise on the Potomac River

Michael and I ventured out to the Mount Vernon Parkway before 7:00 p.m. this evening to scout out a good spot to wait for the much-anticipated and much-heralded “Supermoon.” I’m sorry to have to report that I was a tiny bit disappointed. I confess that I was hoping for that end-of-the-world-large-encroaching-orb-could-swallow-us-whole-fodder-for-a-science-fiction-movie effect, but it didn’t happen.

Yes, it was a lovely moon—slightly larger than usual and a bit brighter. I guess I was expecting it to flood the horizon so fully that I would have to take off my Nikkor 80-400 zoom lens and put on the 50mm just to catch it all in my viewfinder. So large that I would hear audible gasps from the neighboring photographers, then perhaps we would spontaneously hold hands and break into song (Kumbaya, perhaps?). Didn’t happen.

The moon I photographed in Huntsville, Alabama a few years ago seemed a whole lot larger and a lumen or two brighter than tonight’s “Supermoon.” You can view that posting here. I was, however, taken in by the sunset’s show earlier.

Hey! Guess what? I was just ready to publish this post and decided to Google this search: “supermoon was disappointing tonight,” just to see if anyone had the same reaction that I did.

I found this on space.com: On Saturday night, the moon will arrive at perigee at 19:09 UT (3:09 p.m. Eastern Time). Its distance from the Earth at the moment will be 221,565 miles. But just over three years ago, on Dec. 12, 2008, which was also the night of a full moon, the moon reached perigee at 21:39 UT (4:39 p.m. Eastern Time) at a distance of 221,559 miles, about 6 miles closer than Saturday night’s perigee distance. So it seems Saturday night’s supermoon will actually be just a little less super than the full moon of Dec. 2008. (You can read skywatching columnist Joe Rao’s full article here.)

Why do I find this so interesting? Well, I photographed that moon near the Huntsville Airport in December 12, 2008! So my eyes (and my memory) did remember a more impressive sky that night than tonight. Unlike tonight, I wasn’t even hunting for it—my friend Sue had picked me up from the airport and I asked her to pull over so I could get a few shots of the spectacular moon! Who would have thought that the moon being only six miles closer to the earth would make such a noticeable difference?

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Aloft

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Sunset over Victoria Harbour, B.C.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

This is one of my favorite sunset images, shot from the ferry as we entered Victoria Harbour in British Columbia on a trip we took with my friend Sue and her mother in fall 2008. See lots more photos from that wonderful trip in the links below:

Lavender, shopping, cheese, wine, a whale, and yet another sunset

Virginia creeper-clad Fairmont Empress Hotel

Never too many flowers

Dahlias as far as the eye can see…

In the pink…

Shine on, shine on harvest moon…

Butchart Gardens, Passel #1

Butchart Gardens, Passel #2

Visual and aural overload at Pike Place

Cabin in the woods

If it’s Thursday, this must be Bloedel.

There’s a baer in them thar woods!

Wildlife in Spokane

Sunsets over Bainbridge Island

Afternoon at Lake Land’Or

Yesterday Karen and I could hardly believe it was still just February—the temperature was almost 70 degrees when we were at her lakehouse at Lake Land’Or. I spent considerable time trying to entice the ducks to come to the dock so I could photograph them up close—to no avail. So, I had to be content with capturing lovely abstract tree and water reflections instead. We enjoyed the weather while it lasted—today is incredibly windy and in the 50s.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Record shot: Sunday sunset

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Clematis ‘Nelly Moser’

As I write this, our backyard is covered in several inches of snow. It began about 3:00 p.m. this afternoon and didn’t stop until this evening. The snow fell fast and heavy and all the tree branches are outlined in white (a feast for the eyes, but not so good for the trees). Photographic opportunities abound tomorrow morning! Until then, I offer up some color from my garden last spring to contrast the white on white wonderland out there now. Could the Farmer’s Almanac really be correct? It is really only 52 days until spring?

This ‘Nelly Moser’ Clematis has been growing over our tiny backyard pond for more than nine years. In the spring of 2008 it had its most prolific blooming period ever. I wrote about it on this blog here.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.