EMPS #14: Autumn Sunsets at the Dog Park

From Tucson Sunsets

For this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, Carly wants to see an autumn sunset. I'll try to get you a fresh one Monday evening, but for tonight let's pull out a few existing photos from October and November of this year. These were all taken at or near Miko's Corner Playground, the dog park inside Reid Park in midtown Tucson, AZ. It presents a very different vista and different challenges from my other favorite location for sunsets, the parking lot of the Safeway at Golf Links and Wilmot. The best Tucson sunset vistas of all are probably up Mount Lemmon or along Gates Pass, but they are neither close nor convenient, and timing my arrival can be a problem. Besides, the dogs count on visiting Miko's Corner every late afternoon!

In this picture, taken October 20th, the sun had just set and the sky was still mostly blue. I was more interested on the line of power poles between the trees than in dramatic sunset color.

This shot is from November 11th. It's very similar to the one at the top of this entry, which was taken the next day. Both are reruns for this blog, but since they're my favorite two recent sunset shots I'm including them here anyway. I've done nothing to the one from the 11th except resize and sharpen. For the one with the dogs I lightened the picture a bit, and cloned out some but not all of the "orbs" that plague many of my low-light images on this camera. I probably should not use flash outdoors, but sometimes I need to do so for richer color, or to light something in the foreground.

This one I took on November 12th on 22nd St. westbound, on the way to the dog park. As the sun sets earlier and earlier, I sometimes start out a little later than I should, and darkness cuts short our visit to Miko's Corner Playground.

This shot from November 12th was taken a few seconds before the one with the dogs in it at the top of this entry. A third shot in the series from that day was my "final evidence that Cayenne is an alien" picture in which Cayenne has laser beam eyes. I love the dog shots, but this other one ain't bad. I did lighten it up a bit and boost the saturation.

Be sure to check Ellipsis every Monday for the week's topic, and for links to the previous week's participants.

Karen

Update: Monday's sunset was kind of a dud - the colors weren't dramatic at all - but the banding of blues/purples and yellows/oranges was interesting, especially when I boosted the saturation in the resulting photos: