Monday, April 4, 2011

Reflected Sunset

This picture is such a rare one. I was outside looking at the sunset when I happened to turn around. There was a large, soft mass of cloud. It was dense enough to hold the creamy colors of the reflected sunlight yet translucent enough around the edges to reveal the moon.

It reminds me of the painting "Flaming June" by Lord Frederic Leighton. It resembles the color and feel of the fabric as it gently rests over her sleeping frame. To view the painting please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_June


Everyone watches a sunset but how many people will turn around to see the sky behind them? It makes me wonder about what else I've been missing. 

1 comment:

  1. Ah, yes...Looking behind oneself... I left an Albertson's store on Orange Ave, years before digital camera phones, to heavy dark mostly cloudy skies, and looking to the west, the setting sun had found one small hole in them to blast a brilliant, almost incandescent ray of orange and red to the east.

    Then I looked behind me, to the east. An approaching storm was pushing the blackest, thickest, lowest clouds I think I've ever seen in person, through the sky. And the cloud face like a wall seemed to be no more than a thousand feet or less, away.

    The marriage of the two created a perfect arc of luminous pearly grey, like looking into an amphitheater shell, or a bandshell. It was a good 500+ feet tall, and 700-900 feet broad, and it looked as though it had great depth. It was hypnotic, so unbelievably beautiful, then the clouds to the west choked off the peephole, the ray of sunlight was gone, and the 'bandshell' disappeared, leaving the storm wall, nightmare black and winds gusting like a hurricane, bearing down on us in the lot.

    ReplyDelete