Fire on the Water

#10

01.10.10

After three consecutive posts of iPhone photographs featuring hanging artwork; it was time to hit the road and wrestle a pic or three from Mother Nature.  I woke up my co-pilot Q super-duper early, because we wanted to be on the road an hour before the sunrise to catch my favorite morning light.  Alright, so it was not as dramatic as it sounds; we just had to be up by 9 a.m. to be on the road by 9:15 to meet our goal of catching the sunrise.  We were not disappointed!

We got about 15 miles from Anchorage to a popular pull-out on the Seward Highway along the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet that is called 'Beluga Point'.  (The drive from Anchorage to Seward is considered among the Top 5 scenic drives in the U.S.A., by the way.)  I took some acceptable photos there; but the light just wasn't right yet.  So we drove on, and suddenly the sun crested over the Chugach Range to the South over the Kenai Peninsula.  This cast a lovely morning light over the deep waters of the Turnagain Arm, so we made a hasty pull-over and I was able to get some nice photos.  The clouds looked like they had set the ocean on fire.  All of the floating objects are ice.

The beauty of Alaska is such that often times digital processing can only but ruin a photo; so the featured photo, along with the two supporting photos, are all original and unprocessed.  I find myself more attracted to the reflection of burning clouds in the ocean than the actual sun and clouds in the sky.  Perhaps that's why I like photography so much; often times it shows a more exciting reality than the one I am accustomed to focusing on.  

Here are the nominees for Best Supporting Photograph in an iPhone Photo Blog entry:

The music for this entry is 'Deeper Water' by Minnie Driver.  Yeah, that Minnie Driver.  I sampled Minnie's music back in 2004 when I first heard that she was making a CD.  I thought "yeah, that should stink pretty badly", only to find that the music, lyrics and vocals were better than simply passable.  I bought the album for my wife, thinking she might like it, but soon found that we both turned it on a few times per week.  The album is "Everything I've Got In My Pocket", and it might surprise you too with it's quality.  It features an amazing cover of Springsteen's 'Hungry Heart' that is not to be missed.  I chose this track for today's blog entry based on the title of the song, and the peaceful calm it offers to match the morning sunrise in my photo.

Until tomorrow... thank you for looking, listening and reading.  CCE