Happy New Year 2023!

My New Year posts tend to be similar, having some combination of last or first sunset or sunrise photos, and reflections on endings and beginnings, and a wish for a happy new year. New Year 2023 will be no different…

Last sunset – December 31, 2022

New Year’s Eve Fireworks

First Sunrise – January 1, 2023

And Afterwards…

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are special because we deem them so…a recognised meeting point of the old and the new. An opportunity to let go and to start afresh. Yet they are really no different from any other day in that regard…when the moon – in whatever phase – sets…

…and the sun rises on another day…

…when birds, sitting in trees, sing heartily…

…when sunlight streams across hills….

Each day offers the opportunity for reviewing where we are and whether there are things we would like to do differently going forward. We don’t have to wait till the end of the year.

So, Happy New Year! And Happy New Day!

P.S. All photos were taken from my roof…a spot that holds a special place in my heart! 🙂

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Once Upon a Sunset…

Leave me alone, please! Yes, yes, sunset photos are a dime a dozen. But watching the sun set is one of the things I love to do. Taking photos of the sunset sky is another thing I love to do. And sharing sunset photos is something else that I love to do. So…

Once upon a sunset, a woman noticed the evening light against a cluster of palms….

She grabbed her camera and climbed the stairs to the roof of her house. From that vantage point, she saw the sunset sky…

She smiled…and looked closer…click…

She played with the zoom on her camera and looked at the trees, the hills, the clouds, the light…

From speakers somewhere nearby, oldies but goodies were playing. John Holt was singing: “I love you, darling, and that’s no lie, oh-oh, Stick by me and I’ll stick by you…”

Once upon a sunset, on a roof in Kingston, Jamaica, life felt really good….

Cloudy Sunset

Every sunset different. Three hundred and sixty-five of them every year and every one of them different. And then consider all the different places from which you can view the same sunset…different geographical locations, different elevations, seaside, city centre, middle of a field on a plain…different, different, different.

A cloudy sunset, seen from up in the Blue Mountains, looking down towards Kingston…

…as the sun disappears and night falls.

Bird & Old Man’s Beard at Sunset

There was a time when once a week I did a blog post consisting of a photograph and a few words. It was in response to an online photo challenge. I really enjoyed the practice but when the photo challenge ended, my weekly photo post ended too. I’ve sometimes thought about reviving it. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But just for today, here’s a photo and a few words…

A bird and a plant called Old Man’s Beard…on wires…at sunset…a view from a window of my house….

Once Upon a Sunset…

I like taking photos of sunsets. A bit cliched, you suggest? Yes, probably. But I like taking photos of sunsets anyhow.

By the time I went up onto the roof yesterday, the sun had already set and what I was left with was the after-sunset sky…

…which was rather beautiful…

I really do love taking photos of sunsets. Did I say that already?

 

Day’s End & Days End

Sunset…Sunday evening…day’s end. We know that days end, that weekends end, that lives end. Sunset…Sunday evening…day’s end.

Pink Clouds at Sunset

I climb up to the roof and see the setting sun is turning clouds to pink. The traveler’s palm, the water oak, the Number Eleven mango tree all line up against the goodnight sky.

The smiling moon sits behind pink clouds at sunset. “My time now,” she says….

Evening By The Harbour

Nature has its way of doing this, distracting you with its beauty. Sitting at Gloria’s Seafood restaurant at Victoria Pier on Kingston Harbour a few weeks ago, I wasn’t thinking much about how long it was taking for the food to arrive, the seriously polluted state of the harbour or the current events and governance issues that had been my day’s focus. I was captivated by clouds above the horizon…

…trees silhouetted against the sky…

…and the setting sun….

Even the buildings looked better at that time of day…

One Coconut Tree at Sunset

I normally take photos of this coconut tree at sunrise. I must have taken hundreds of photos of it over the years…against spectacular red skies or pink clouds…or lit by sunlight as the sun comes over the mountains…or in silhouette…sheltering doves or baldpates or on one occasion a very steely-eyed johncrow. But today I photographed the coconut tree, not as the sun was rising, but as it was setting…

This meant that I was standing on my roof with my back to the setting sun……seeing coconuts at various stages of development……some very small ones, just starting out….And all the while, behind me, the sun continued to set…

The Sky One Evening

Yesterday evening I went up on the roof to watch the sun go down, something I often do. By the time I got there, the sun had already set, but the sky remembered!

Every sunset is different. Even the same sunset sky goes through many moods, vibrant shades of orange giving way to subtle shades of pink.

Eventually all sign of the sun is gone, leaving the night to electric lights and Venus…