Evening, June 20, 2016

I heard thunder, saw clouds, and hoped for lightning but that didn't happen. This sequence shows the sun lights the bottoms of clouds above us as it sinks behind the mountains, behind the curve of the globe, the longest day of the year, obliquely tinted behind all that atmosphere like a gel filter.

lightning strike

Score!

I spoke too soon and acted too soon. And now I must pay for my haste. But it wasn't haste. It was thoughtful and took a lot of time. Then it turned out to be haste. Today I decided that I need a lightning detector so I bought one. It will be here in a few days.

I did not realize the app on the telephone does the same thing.

Today two storms passed through. And it was lightning all over the place. The first one I thought would destroy a newly planted garden with serious hail. Very serious. That shows in the first video right off.  The storm marches right up and pow. Then the sky clears so brightly that the infrared phone signal does not register anymore and the camera shuts off.

Then it darkens again and the camera is started again.

The lightning detector that I bought today detects infrared light emitted immediately before the electric discharge of lightning. I didn't know that happens until I researched the detectors.

And the camera is set to accept an infrared signal for a remote shutter device. But the phone is signaling it every minute instead.

The phone keeps the camera going or else the camera would shut off after one minute to save power. The clouds triggered the camera between the timed phone trigger signals.

I noticed one frame of 285 frames is brighter than all the rest and no movement in the clouds. I was considering removing the frame so it doesn't mess up the time-lapse, then saw in the corner it is a lightning strike. Hard to see because it lit the sky. The strike occurs near the end of the second video when the sky turns from gray to gold to blue.

I didn't need to buy the triggering device. The phone and camera combo already does that.

And this is another of those costly 'live and learn' things recategorized as education expense, a large and encompassing category.

The detectors get poor reviews. And now I think I know why. The sky was electric and making lightening for hours but not showing like this one. It needed a good one before it worked. And maybe it's been getting lightning strikes all along but I only noticed it now.

It's a new thing!

Come on, look at that. We photographer types wee ourselves over a photo like this. 

Check out the hail storm that comes and smacks us and moves on and the tornado-like circular pattern happening right in front of us. It looks fast but it lasted a long time.

167 frames

The flash happens near the end. 

286 frames

"There can be only one" sky

It's only 183 frames. I keep hoping for a classically western painted sky and keep being teased. What could be used around here for that is a very large fire. The stunning skyscapes occur in flashes but I've seen them hold for long periods. That is the quest. Last night, hardly anything there and hardly moving at all. The whole sky very still and blue except that one edge of faint cloud that appears as a pink lightning stroke at the very beginning, holding promise for the rest, but the only thing that happens is some guy with a sword and screaming, "There can be only one!" Is transformed, but not get killed by the pink cloud lightning, the sky goes light, faint clouds form and move to the north and then gather and swirl in front of the camera before it shuts off. Other than that little disturbance at first, we get all kind of crackpots wandering into the parking below, bottle shop down there attracts all types, other than that little incident, no excitement to mention.

rain, and not just regular rain

Colorado rain. I'm glad my camera caught this because it does show what I love. I'm hoping for startling color and not getting that. Instead, it shows a weather phenomena that arrested my attention the moment I saw it and has ever since. It's when the cloud in the distance can be seen releasing its water directly under itself but not in the area around it. I've only seen this in western sky. I've only seen it since moving here. The cloud type is called "virga" [google images] and that is very close to a Spanish swear.

It happens in dry air, I think. Being able to see it happens best in dry air maybe. Like the cloud is a sponge up there and cannot hold its water. And there isn't atmosphere fogging the view. It seems to evaporate before it hits the ground and often does. Sometimes, wonder of wonders, you're in it. Getting wet, just barely with a cloud directly above you.

That happened. And this sounds silly, but I felt joy to be finally directly under a virga.

Okay, imagine we're following Bob Ross. He has us paint a happy little cloud that lives in our western sky. Ross decides this happy little cloud wants to lose its water so he dries his wide brush that looks like an exterior house brush and whacks it back and forth on the easel leg until it's dry, and to show us how to paint a virga he lifts the dry abused brush to the bottom edge of the happy little cloud and allows his the dry bristles to pick up some darker grayer wet pigment on the bottom, a mere edge, then he drags the brush downward and lifts the brush away from the canvas as he drags down, boom, virga, just like that with one stroke. 

And now you get to see it. 

I'm telling you, this phase of time lapse obsession is going on longer than I thought it would because I keep seeing great things but I may have to give it up out of sadness. I can't take it. Such a shame I cannot show this wonder in all its true splendor that has me dazzled and mesmerized. There are 425 photographs and so many great ones, and a good portion have these virgas sweeping across the foothills in the distance, I can feel them wash over Morrison and our old family home, right to left, then the near background the same sweep right to left, then midground sweep right to left, then closer, boom, it's there the rain is right in front of the camera then suddenly stops. All that after having already dumped on whole area thoroughly. Quite a good show. Each photograph is 9.3MB of eyepopping detail worthy artworks themselves. And now all 425 photographs are reduced to 12.6MB and that right there is properly criminal misrepresentation. Nonetheless, here it is.  

surprise Orion

Orion is my favorite constellation. I don't know why. Maybe because it seems to stick out the most where I live so it's seen immediately whenever stars are seen. I had the time-lapse set up for early morning before sunrise then fell asleep on the sofa right there with the patio door partially opened akin to being outside when it's cold. A clear ice experiment is going on outside just beyond the opened door. The camera's shutter stays open a very long time and takes nearly a minute to process before showing what it did on the back, the thing looked so long so wide-eyed to soak up more light like a cat staring down prey in the night, the photos do not show the darkness I'm seeing. They're ruined. Later when strung together and run the stars show in cloudless night and there is Orion, my favorite stars tucking in precisely my little chunk of the sky. My sky is framed by the building I'm in and Orion tucks right into the frame and right before daybreak this time of year. Nice. I lived here seven years and I did not know that until seeing the time-lapse.

I will show you if you care to see but first something entirely unrelated to constellation Orion and to time-lapses. This is not my idea. Last night on Twitter, Bruce, a lawyer in South Carolina who goes by the Twitter address  'gay patriot' and who changes his online Twitter handle with frequency to something amusing, presently 'Happy Homodays,' asked which photo of Tashfeen Malik we thought looked better, the one of her wearing a hijab or the one of her whole body heavily made up with street.

That Bruce, he cracks me up. This woman's a skunk, she doesn't get top billing, no, she's a thought after Orion, a star group held in fascination long before this woman's religion ever came into being and will still fascinate ages after they're gone. She is Bruce's joke.

It gets much worse.