In 2017, we travelled to Latvia during the northern summer to celebrate the marriage of our son and meet his beautiful bride. This photo was taken at about 10pm during the long, slow sunset on their wedding day. By this time, I had yet another camera, a Panasonic Lumix, which I chose as a travel camera because the Nikon equipment (by now upgraded) was a bit heavy to carry around on a relaxed holiday. The photo invites comparisons to the 2006 photo taken at Woolbales shelter on the Bibbulmun Track, and to the bushwalking photo from 1981.
In 1981 I was unable to combine slides with different exposures. In 2006, I was able to combine two digital images to make the Woolbales photo. This time, in a similar lighting situation, the camera had sufficient dynamic range to get the photo in a single shot. I respect the technology that lies behind the capture of this image. It is remarkable to be able to have the sun in the photo without burning out the sky, and yet retain details in the shadowed side of my son and his wife.
A little while later in the evening, I was watching when the sun finally sank below the horizon. Briefly but distinctly, I saw the fabled green ray, a couple of short bursts of green light that can follow the sunset in settings like this. Sadly, it was too brief to photograph.
On the same trip, I took this photo in the forest at Kemeri National Park. It’s not my usual style of photo, but I like trying to make the best of whatever presents itself and, in this case, the present opportunity was abstract. My son noted the denseness of the tree trunks and the photo composed itself when I looked for a perspective on the forest that allowed no glimpses of distant patches of foliage or sky.
I was fortunate enough to go on another trip later in the year, this time to Bali. The lightweight Lumix accompanied me again, and I was able to capture this lizard on a tree trunk at my accommodation. The Lumix has a built-in zoom lens with a range equivalent to 25mm to 400mm. The zoom took me in close to the lizard as it crept around the trunk and positioned itself for a leap into the next tree.