GOLDEN AFTERNOON AND EARLY SUNSET IN JANUARY

I looked out the window and the light was golden against the trees. It’s not the color you usually see in the middle of winter. I associate that color with autumn and sometimes, afternoons in the late spring. Maybe it was that we’d just had a bit of rain and the light coming through the rain in the upper atmosphere had turned to gold. I’ve seen that before, though only once.

Sunrise in January 2021 as the year was turning

I didn’t think I’d be be able to catch that light, but I wanted to try. I did get some of the light. A wee bit. It was a short twilight and after just half a dozen shots, suddenly it was full dark.

Those golden trees are really conifers and they are dark green. The gold is a reflection from the sky. It turned all the trees by the road to gold. It lasted for a long time, too. By the time we stopped it was nearly gone,. This picture IS square!

I should mention that the same color of gold covered the sky in Boston on the same day and the day after, too. It has to do, according to the meteorologist, to do with high level snow which never hits the ground. It makes a giant reflecting mirror or reflector in the sky. The lowering sun turns it and everything around it — clouds, buildings, trees — to gold. I have seen it only twice before. Once, late in February on the road home from Connecticut. We had to stop and take pictures which we couldn’t do until we left the highway (nowhere to pull off and the cops get very funky about drivers stopping to take pictures) and then again on the river in November one late afternoon. In that case, though, it was a reflection of the bronze-colored oak leaves still clinging to the trees. It made the ducks look as if they were swimming on a pond of gold.

And this is why I always have a camera — and NOT a cell phone. Although they have good lenses these days, they you can’t really point them or adjust them like a real camera. And none of them has a 100-300mm lens, either. My lens and camera cost less than the phone!

Ducks on the Mumford in November — Sorry,  this photo is NOT square!

Categories: Blackstone River, Gallery, Photography, Sunset, Trees

Tags: #SquareUp, evening, gallery, golden light, Marilyn Armstrong, Photography, Sunset in January