“The best things in life are unexpected because there were no expectations.” ? Eli Khamarov

I wrote entirely too much about may crazy running around last Wednesday but this was easily the best part of the day. I had woken up in the pre-dawn hours and managed to capture a sliver of the Hunter’s moon setting over Abbot Hall and the harbor and then drove all around town trying to figure out where to shoot the moonrise. On a whim, I headed to Harding Lane and then crossed to Brown’s Island since it was low tide. As I crossed, I started to see the sunset forming and wondered if the clouds over Chandler Hovey Park might pick up the light. I quickly increased my gait and then almost lost a shoe in the mud. I watched my steps and made it to the edge of Brown’s Island in time to capture a truly unexpected sunset.

I shot here for 15 minutes which felt so much longer and came away with six ‘keepers’ of which this one is my current favorite. This was close to the start of the sunset which later formed into more of a pink hue but the golden reflections on the harbor made this one an instant favorite. It’s an unusual vantage point and thus a unique composition for the hundreds if not thousands of times I have shot this lighthouse. My eyes kept taking in this scene while there in person and maybe even more so while processing the image. I took note of the soft red light on the Neck, the two birds on the rocks in the foreground, the hint of the sun’s reflection in the home to the right and the too few boats left in the harbor on October 20th.

I’ll definitely be sharing the others from this outing in the near future but, for now, enjoy this first look at an unexpected sunset.