Nature 2+ vs Photog 0 -- but a lesson learned :)

There was a cruise ship arriving in paradise aka Rabaul this morning. Cruise ships asteam in around 6am to dock around 7am, so I leaped (stumbled) out of bed at 5.17am to catch a picture of it going past the volcanoes at the harbor entrance.

Now -- I already have a good pic of this taken a few months ago, but the more the merrier and I had located a new viewpoint. I packed the GX7+12-35mm + 45-150mm lenses (probably should have taken the 100-300mm but let's face it, I was still pottering around only half awake and it looked heavy!).

I had big drink of water, about half a liter, then I set out to walk the 20 minutes or so to the chosen location.

The dawn sky was pretty nice as I walked along (take notice of the shape of those clouds).

I got there, made sure I would have a clear view, and seeing no sign of the ship on the horizon, I walked a bit further down the road. And there I saw the ship sitting right under the cloud. So I zoomed back to my shooting site and took my first picture. But look at the cloud now -- the two clouds have joined together and as you can see, the sun is rising right behind them. Oh no!

The ship was in shadow -- and that was how it remained as it steamed right up to the volcanoes.

You'll notice the mountain at the rear has some light on it, but the nearest volcano, the ship, and the sea are all in shade. Aargh! And pfui to th interesting sky (I didn't even notice it until I got back home and edited the pix)!

As the ship steamed on, I took the two pictures I was actually there for. Tavurvur volcano (the bare one) has just a bit of light on it and there is a hint of lightening of the ship's stern but the strong cross light of the whole scene that I was looking for is simply not forthcoming. Bl**dy cloud!!!

After some haze removal, curve adjustment, etc., etc, I got this pic. Won't ever be using it though. Good grief.

And the ship's stern definitely has some light on it now, although not the smashing bright sunlight we expect here at this time (a few minutes after 6am with the sun fully risen) -- and there is no light on the side of the ship. Huh? There was last time!

A final wasted effort for a decent shot -- but you know how it is, you've made the effort to get there so you're going to take a picture whatever!!! There is still no light on the side of the ship -- I was hoping it might turn a little or something; no such luck. The foreground was still in total shade; I had to tweak the curve quire severely just to get this amount of detail showing.

Having taken this shot, I left to walk home for breakfast, taking a final snap of the cloud obscuring the sun as I left.

Stinkin' cloud! LOL!

So Nature 1, photog 0.

And nature's second point? No light on the side of the ship. How come? The moment I thought about it, it was obvious. I have been taking some pix of dawn recently and had noticed that the sun rise point had moved to the left a bit -- northerly; due to the earth's tilt the sun's overhead point is moving north towards the Tropic of Cancer.

Being pretty much right on the equator, the sun is pretty much right overhead and the days are pretty much 12 hours straight and it is warm all the time (just sometimes a bit wetter than at other times) so we don't give much thought to these movements.

But that's what it is -- last time I photographed a ship coming into the harbor was back in November when the sun was about as far south of us as it gets, giving the Tropic of Capricorn a nudge. The result was much more pleasing (and the sun was shining!).

You can see that picture in the banner here .

So Nature 2, photog 0. The lesson learned is to think about the sun's seasonal change of position in the sky even if it is academic as far as seasonal change on the ground is concerned (apart from a bit of a shift on the wet~dry continuum)!

Have a nice seasonal day everyone!

PS: A friend phoned last night from Melbourne in southern Australia , my home town, and complained bitterly about the cold -- or was that complained about the bitter cold? He used to live here too so he understood when I laughed. Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!