For several years, the photograph on the home page of my website has been one of a sunrise. I took that photo during an early morning paddle on Sheridan Lake in South Dakota. Over the years I have taken a lot of photographs of sunrises. That particular photograph was taken by a digital point and shoot camera that has a sealed case to protect it from water. It can be used for underwater photography as well as photos taken above the water. The camera has a number of preset settings including one specifically for taking photographs of sunrises and sunsets. I still have that camera and it works well. I keep it handy for paddling and other activities where another camera might get wet.

I obtained that camera after having made a costly mistake with another digital camera that I once owned. The other camera was not designed to get wet. I had that camera in the pocket of a life jacket one morning as I slipped a kayak into the lake. I was boarding the kayak from the dock. This particular kayak is long and narrow and I had made it to be light weight and to perform well in rough water. It is a fun boat to paddle and I’ve paddled it in the Salish Sea off the coast of Washington on many occasions. That particular morning as I transferred my weight from the dock to the small cockpit of the kayak, before securing my skirt around the cockpit, I got off balance and the boat rolled over on its side. I had a paddle in my arms and quickly recovered, but not before having laid myself in the water. It might have been amusing to watch. The inadvertent roll was not a graceful move like an intentional rolling of a boat. In the process I immersed the digital camera in the lake. It didn’t survive the drenching. I carefully dried out the camera when I returned home, but he water had created a short that damaged a circuit in the camera. I ended up going for several weeks without a digital camera as I saved up to replace it with one that is waterproof.

Even though I own a camera that works well for making photographs of sunrises and sunsets, I find that I frequently am out walking or engaging in other activities without having taken the camera with me. One reason that I have gotten in the habit of heading out without a camera is that the digital camera in my cell phone is fairly sophisticated. It isn’t quite as good at capturing images as another camera, but it has the advantage of the simple fact that I almost always have it in my pocket. My cell phone camera, however, is not optimal for taking pictures directly at the sun. I often take pictures in what is called a live mode. The camera automatically takes a short burst of several images and a digital processor in the device merges those images into a single still picture. The mode allows the image to freeze action without blurring. However, when aimed directly at the sun, it over exposes the sensors in the camera resulting in an area of the photograph being burned out. In the picture the sun looks like it is a different shape than it appears to the eye. The sun hasn’t changed shape, the light has overwhelmed the digital sensors.

I suppose that such pictures might one day cause damage to the sensors in the phone camera, but it is unlikely. The end result is that I get some images with a kind of surreal beauty. I keep some of those images because I like them, but they are not accurate depictions of what I have seen with my eye. You can see the difference by comparing that image with the one at the top of today’s journal entry. In the first photograph, I used the correct setting for a sunset picture. In the other one, I used the live mode.

Neither photograph, however, has the quality that I could have achieved had I used a dedicated camera instead of my phone. Alas, I didn’t have another camera with me when we went for our walk last evening. It had been a busy day and we walked late in the evening as the light was fading. The sunset was gorgeous, enhanced by the smoke in the air from Canadian wildfires. We have escaped the oppressive smoke that has afflicted some other parts of the country. Our skies have been refreshed with winds blowing across the Pacific, but a bit of smoke can be seen between us and the islands. The smoke filtered the sunlight into a beautiful orange glow over the calm waters last evening.

When I came home and looked at the photographs on my computer, I paused to reflect on the fact that I take a lot more sunset pictures these days than was the case for the rest of my life. In retirement I am a bit less likely to venture out into the predawn light, sleeping in a bit and rarely paddling first thing. However, the real reason I take fewer pictures of sunrises these days is that our sunsets are much more dramatic. Sunrises are not over the water in our west coast location. The sun rises over the Cascade mountains to our east. The sunrises are beautiful, but the sunsets over the bay have the added feature of the reflections on the surface of the water.

A quick scan of a couple of decades of photographs reveals that I have shifted from sunrise to sunset photographs. It is, I think, a bit of a symbol of the subtle changes in my lifestyle. I live in a place that is new to me. My days have shifted so that I rise a bit later in the morning and stay up a bit later in the evening. The days are long during the summer up here in the north, so I tend to linger in the evening. it is not uncommon for us to take walks later in the evening. Remaining awake a bit later, savoring the time a bit before sleep is a pretty good symbol for my life phase. I’m semi-retired, taking things a bit slower. I’m savoring the time that I have these days. I might even remember to take the right camera to capture a few more images of the sunset during the sunset of my life. It appears that I will have many more opportunities.