Fourth Photography Competition: Civil Twilight

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Rising before dawn is no great hardship at 57 Degrees North in the depths of winter – it is about 08:45 in the morning – however doing so will reward you with a very special time of day, when night changes through astronomical twilight, to nautical twilight, and gradually to the half hour before dawn – officially defined as civil twilight, when some of these images were taken.
If we never took our cameras out from an hour after dawn to an hour before sunset, we would have available the best natural lighting available, with the warmest tones. Images taken with the sun high in the sky look bleached – the colours washed out and pale, shadows non-existent, or scarcely defining the shape casting them.
Instead of snapping away with the sun still visible in the sky, try to discipline yourself to rise before the sun does, by half an hour or so, and see what a different world is out there waiting for you…alternatively if you are physically incapable of dragging yourself out of bed before 09:00 hrs in winter (!) wait for the sun to sink below the horizon and stay around for forty-five minutes or an hour, and watch what happens to the changing colours and tones around you. It is very special and a remarkable time of the day, as it changes to night.
So I invite images taken before the sun rises above the horizon or clearly after it has sunk. However preference will be given to pre-dawn images. The world has millions of sunset shots already, so be sure it has sunk out of sight completely if you want to try for an entry at that end of the day.
Dusk colouring is self-explanatory, but I include some images taken at dusk to illustrate what the majority of photographers miss, by focussing on sunsets, and not having the patience or the knowledge to wait up to an hour after the sun disappears under the horizon to see what a beautiful palette is frequently revealed. I believe some of the world’s finest photography is taken within an hour or so of dawn and dusk – the light is very special at that time of day, and is also excellent, incidentally, for portrait photography.
I have included examples of two images where they would be disqualified because the sun is clearly above the horizon – lighting the field in front of the haybales in the photograph of the Bridge at Inverness, and where it is rounding the edge of the house in the courtyard dawn shot. You may or may not like them as photographs but they do not meet the entry criteria for the purposes of this fortnight’s competition. Hopefully these guidelines are crystal clear, and will have you photographing at a time of day you may not normally be out and about.
IF you don’t have a tripod, use a fencepost, or lean with your back against a wall, to steady your camera. Alternatively if you have the option set a higher ISO number (film speed). I hope you will all enjoy the challenge of providing us with a good range of suitable dazzling entries – errrm, maybe that should read non-dazzling, as dazzling ones will be disqualified 🙂

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Author: coldwaterjohn

CWJ travelled extensively with his family, having worked in eleven countries over thirty years. A keen photographer, holding a Private Pilot's Licence, he focuses mainly on landscape and aerial imagery. Having worked in the Middle East extensively he follows developments in that region with particular interest, and views with growing concern, the radicalisation flowing from Islamic fundamentalism, and the intolerance for opposing views, stemming from it.

118 thoughts on “Fourth Photography Competition: Civil Twilight”

  1. I cheated and read this as ‘Private’.

    As an early riser, I reckon there is something quite special about pre-dawn.

  2. You may have an Error message:”This slideshow requires JavaScript”
    Apparently, unless Bearsy knows differently it is something which comes up occasionally in WordPress from having googled for clarification, and needs to be fixed by a Staffer. Bearsy, am I right?

  3. Boa – Welcome to the Early Risers’ Club! A lifetime of being up by 6 a.m. to be in the office by 7 a.m.in the Middle East for a 7.30a.m. to 2 p.m. six day week has left its mark.

  4. CWJ

    6.00 am? That’s late! All joking – I’m usually up around 5.00 am and sometimes earlier.

    I don’t think I have a any photos – but I might go digging. When I lived in Darwin I would sit on my balcony, where I could watch the sun rise out of the sea and then set back into the sea. The early mornings were especially magnificent, with the eerie blue light and cascades of meteorites.

  5. Oooh, tricky! This time of year it’s as cold as a witch’s whatsit both inside and outside The Cave just before the sun comes up. No matter, I’ll give it a go. The things I do for you, CWJ. Good piccies, by the way – you’d probably have won again if this had been somebody else’s comp.

    OZ

  6. OZ: Try Latitude 57N if you think you’re cold at that time in the morning – aren’t you down in Spain or Portugal somewhere? We are barely 600 miles south of the Arctic Circle!

  7. CWJ – Southern Alentejo, Portugal, to be precise, which is about 1,400 miles nearer the Equator than you. Still, temperature is a relative concept, by which I mean I wouldn’t fancy a swim in your pool at any time of the year unless it’s a) indoor and b) heated. 🙂

    OZ

  8. You do realise, CWJ, that this will involve a lifestyle change and I may have to read the instruction book which came with my camera!

    Dawn, what’s that?

    Looking on the bright side, the ten day forecast gives me precisely three opportunities; the rest of the time it looks like complete cloud cover.

    I’ll set my alarm. 😦

  9. I have left the window of dusk open as well, for the wimps, so long as the sun has gone down out of sight…Araminta, it is designed to have people reaching for their camera’s instruction book, so I’m glad that part of it is working!

  10. I have a cunning plan, CWJ.

    I will stagger out of bed, and then take some shots from the open bathroom window, resting my camera on the window frame to avoid camera shake. 🙂

    Then, I’ll go back to bed!

  14. Hmmm… would my picture count….? I took it a few weeks ago as the sun was coming up.
    I won’t use it tough… I shall try and get out and about early on. Trouble is dawn is now getting earlier and earlier!

  16. View from bathroom at Dawn

    Frankly, CWJ, it was all a bit of a waste of time; this is the best of a very poor bunch, but I did get up at 7.00am.

    I will have to see if I can find a more interesting vantage point in the next couple of weeks.

  17. Good start Araminta. You have caught the light I am looking for, in this series. Inevitably when there are few clouds for it to colour, the impact is less dramatic,but with our weather, they could be with you in the next few minutes -it snowed here overnight, so anything is possible!

  19. Hello CWJ: I took this one of the creek through the window back in the summer when dawn was about 6:00 am. It’s a scan of a print (remember film cameras?) so its a bit fuzzy and dark.

  20. Bravo and LW – exactly what I am looking for – great shots.
    Following Araminta’s antics in nearly falling out the bathroom window this morning, perhaps I should have JM draft a non-liability clause for me along the lines if anyone dies in attempting to produce an image for this competition, it’s your problem, not mine 🙂

  21. How dismal it it here this morning, again….
    the trees are moving and the rooks are not happy.

  22. Just driven this morning over Dava Moor down to Glasgow via Perth on the A9. A blizzard blowing between Dalwhinnie and Pitlochry and visibility at the Drumochter Pass, Nil! Heavy rain and strong winds battering us is Glasgow. Nearly took off unaided, clutching a bath panel, outside B&Q – so much for volunteering DIY services to the youngest…

  25. Image above taken as the Wolf Moon in January set in the morning sky. Just in case we don’t get a decent dawn in the next couple of weeks!

  28. Sunday isn’t the best day to ask me to get up0 before dawn, akershally. 🙂

    Maybe Monday, or Tuesday? I haven’t see the forecast, but the wind and dullness are not inspiring.

  30. Nope, needs resizing. Too deep and not wide enough. Help!! Sob!

    OZ

    Is that what you wanted? Soutie

  31. There’s some lovely photos here, but with the weather as it is here, its a good thing we didn’t instate the ‘has to be taken within the time scale of the competition’ rule, aint it?

  32. Bless you, Soutie – that’s exactly how it was supposed to look!

    I read all Bearsy’s tutorials an’ everything an’ it looked perfect when I imported it into a draft post, honest, an’ I’m not very good at HTML, an’ then it all went wrong when I copied it to this thread an’ I don’t know why an’ I just don’t want Bearsy shouting at me again an’ I’ve suddenly realised I need to take a breath right now.

    If anyone needs me, I’ll be the thick, hairy lump on the naughty step 😦

    Sniffle!

    OZ

  33. I have posted under ‘photos’ (on the front page there’s a tab called ‘photos’) on my own site, Wolfie, and practiced there… but still got it wrong several times. Feel free to practice there, why don’t you?

  37. OZ

    I think I’ve discovered your problem – putting pictures into a post is not the same as putting them into a comment. It’s totally different!

    So – it will look fine in a post. But if you copy the ‘code’ from a post into a comment it won’t work – no matter how many times you try! 🙂

    I didn’t post pictures in comments until a few months ago. OK, I’m lucky and I got Bearsy to show me how to do it – but I had to go back to the comment I knew had worked about half-a-dozen times before the ‘formula’ stuck firmly in my head.

    I tried to show you on one of your posts, but I realise now that you may not have known how to read what I had written in one of your comments. On your posts you can ‘Edit’ all comments. Had you clicked on that you would have seen the ‘code’ that I wrote for the picture.

    Take Pseu’s advice (Thanks Pseu!) and have a go on her site.

  38. I apologise for interrupting, but Charioteers will find that they cannot put comments containing images into Pseu’s blog. Araminta will, I’m sure, explain why.

    Pseu might be interested to know that her blog’s comment column is narrower than The Chariot’s comment column, which means that she should specify a width of 525 rather than 600 for images in comments on her Photos page.

  41. That’s right Pseu – Donald and I found this out on his site, and Araminta discovered it as well when she tried to put a picture in a comment on Jan’s blog. 🙂

  42. Yes, Nym.

    Bearsy is quite right. I tried on Jan’s site and it will not work if you are not an author.

    He’s also right about the column width; my site has the same problem. The comment width is narrower, which can be a tad confusing.

  44. Perhaps, and it is only a suggestion, one could practise here, but on the end of one’s own post. If it goes horribly wrong then it is possible to delete it.

  45. Very true, Ara. Where there’s a will there’s away.

    If anyone wants to practice on my site they’ll have to ask to be an author over there and then I’ll look into how to go about that too!

  46. Everyone is welcome to practise here.

    As Araminta implies, if you do it on one of your own posts here, you can actually edit your trial image comment time and time again until you get it right. You can’t edit comments on other people’s posts, but you can edit all comments on a post that you own.

  48. Thank you all for your suggestions and support (Araminta – email replied to and very useful it was too). I’ll get there eventually.

    OZ

  66. OK OZ – Not too bad!!

    All’s well until you get to the .jpg

    I think you probably put an end of quote after that – it just didn’t come out properly because you forgot to close the bracket after the /

    What you start, whether it’s quote marks or brackets you must close.

    Think of the opening angle bracket as an order to WordPress to do what comes after it. You then have to tell WordPress where the order ends –

    / = not
    > = end of command.

    Have another go – and if you get it right I’ll delete your first attempt, your expletive and my picture!

    Top marks for trying 🙂

    Dinner’s ready – I’ll be back!

  67. Cheers, Boadicea – I do apologise for being thick. Let’s see if this works.

    My html reads img src=”http://bearsy.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/08-02-11-008.jpg” width=”600″ / with synbols at either end.

    OZ

  69. Great shot OZ.
    My trick for coping with Bearsy’s techincalities is to cut and paste my photo ID – the http nonsense in the comment I want to make. Then to go to the top of the charioteer’s page, and open up Bearsy’s instructions on the top bar for inserting pix in comments, copy his formula, and then paste that below my photo http in the comment box. You can get back to your draft comment, by a couple of back clicks on the browser arrow pointing <. Then cut out the bearsy bit between the inverted commas"…..jpg"
    and then cut and paste your own in-between the "". That may sound horribly complicated, but it works every time for me…

  70. OZ! Well done!

    Your html with the brackets at either end worked!

    You may have to go back a few times before the code sticks in your head – but you’re there :-).

    CWJ

    I’ll leave you to remove OZ’s first attempt if you want to – I’ll just remove my posting of OZ’z picture.

  71. Thanks, CWJ. It was the first morning for a while that there had been any contrast in the sky. Unfortunately, the early promise was not fulfilled and now it’s so foggy I can’t even see the trees in the left foreground.

    OZ

  73. CWJ – I have just returned from an enjoyable lunch and seen the changes you have made. Thank you for your deft and most generous editing and, again, my apologies for clogging up your otherwise excellent post earlier this morning. If it’s any consolation, you, Bearsy and Araminta might finally have succeeded in punching some techie stuff into the lupine noggin and I am grateful for your collective perseverence to the point where I feel indebted.

    So, does anyone want to learn how to chase down, eviscerate and consume a goat in seven easy lessons? Anyone?

    OZ

  74. OZ: I am guessing Boa or Bearsy sorted you out – I have been out all day.
    On goats and young camels, I have some considerable experience in watching them being slaughtered on the spot and then cooked in an open pit, on our arrival at some branch in the boondocks which I hadn’t visited for a while: I thought Right Brain was going to be sick, the first time it happened at Dalkhut village on the Yemen-Oman border: Google Earth 16° 42.349’N 53° 14.821’E if you want to see what I mean by remote!

  75. CWJ – Your No. 69, 9.24 AM, perchance? You are too modest. Not to say Bearsy’s and Araminta’s tutorials aren’t absolutely invaluable too. They are – it’s a collective lesson for the hard-of-understanding.

    As a matter of purely philological interest, what is the local name for cooking in an open pit in that part of the world? Where I was it was ‘umu’ (Polynesian) or ‘mumu’ (Melanesian). Was it you or Christopher who lived for a while in Hawai’i?

    And for the record, despite today’s self-inflicted shenanigans I’d still like to leave my original submission of Dawn at Kangaroo Point as my official entry.

    OZ

  76. OZ I see what you mean -I dashed that off six minutes before I left the house for a day of photography of their collection for a museum for which I volunteered, via NADFAS. 100 images done and 33,900 to go! In fairness there are three of us have volunteered so that’s only 11,300 each…
    Bedouin style charcoal-grilled meat in a pit, has a name,but I suspect if I ask an Arab friend, they will look puzzled, and say “Barbecue, yahnee!”
    It must be Christopher who managed Hawaii.
    Noted you want Kangaroo Point as official entry. Closer to decision time I will see if I can figure out how to run a poll, but without revealing its results in advance!

  78. Pseu – Thank you Pseu, seeing as how I was freezing Bearsy’s breakfast off at the time, 🙂

    OZ

  80. Nice one Toc. Dull grey morning here, and dawn imperceptible…I am beginning to think that asking for shots of lightning taken in the current fortnight might have produced more entries!

  82. Dawn has been disappointing again here – though last night’s sunset was beautiful for a brief time

  83. Enjoyed these stunning images, esp Bravo’s Moscow winter dawn.

    Hey, cwj, many years ago we parked the camper van on the Kyle of Tonque and spent the night there. Woke at 3.30am to a pre-dawn sky of astounding pinks and violets with purple mountains in the distance. Took some great pics wandering around in our pjs. Unfortunately they were transparencies and they are packed away somewhere. V memorable though.

    ps I am not posting the Crack of Dawn again. Once was enough for dawn. 😉

  84. OZ – On the subject of goats in pits:the dish cooked in a pit is called Shuwa. The arabic word for grilling is meshwee and the verb is Ishwe -not to be confused with barbecued lamb/goat which is Mishkak. I hope that has added considerably to your international culinary vocabulary – there is no charge for this service, incidentally!

  85. Oh drool, CWJ and thank you! I’ve not been to North Africa yet, nor learned a word of Arabic, so I now feel able to include that region into my list of hunting grounds. In the meantime I fully intend to do an umu/mumu/imu/shuwa before the authorities ban open fires here for another season, after which mishkak is definitely on the menu again.

    OZ

  90. At last we had a discernible dawn! The weather at the back of the house was quite different though and the black cloud came our way and dumped on us

  98. CWJ, you decide and disqualify me if you see fit. However, I would call the horizon the top of the trees in the distance and the sun is not above it. Shining through them perhaps but not above them. But that is just my biased opinion. Seeing as I slept the night on the beach, I was at least there and awake long before sunrise. Anyway, its summer here at the moment and the sun rises much earlier than it does in the northern hemisphere at the moment. Too early for me. It’s not fair!

  99. Hiya, Sipu – I visited Mozambique many times during the nineties, based in Quelimane and with the whole of Zambezia province in which to roam. To my eternal chagrin I was unable to string together even a few words of Portuguese at that time, but at the end I was presented with a glossy book about the country containing wonderful photographs such as yours. Thanks for the memories.

    CWJ – I reckon Sipu snapped it with about ten seconds to spare. 🙂

    OZ

  100. Sipu, just to blow your mind with a bit of pedantry:
    Definition Sun’s centre relative to mathematical horizon[3]
    Day 0° ≤ θs
    Sun’s lower limb at horizon θs = 0° 15′
    Center of Sun’s disk at horizon θs = 0°
    Sun’s upper limb at horizon θs = −0° 15′
    Solar twilight 0° ≤ θs < 6°
    Civil twilight −6° ≤ θs < 0°
    Nautical twilight −12° ≤ θs < −6°
    Astronomical twilight −18° ≤ θs < −12°
    Night θs < −18°
    It is a great shot, but if we were being pedantic, and I don't propose to be, it is more in the solar twilight than civil twilight bracket, and it is included already in the poll 🙂

  102. Oh, double bother and curses, CWJ.

    I fully intend, weather permitting and etc to replace my pathetic first attempts.

    I feel mortified, repeat mortified, that I am included in your poll. 😦

  104. CWJ, I always had Nautical twilight at −11° ≤ 7s < −5°, but I accept your figures. I am delighted that pedantry was set aside in this instance.

    OZ, this was taken a few miles north of Isla de Mozambique. Did you ever get there? Its a fascinating place. I was there in 2004. Maybe I should post my journal for my trip there, with some of the photos. Thanks for your support, by the way.

  105. Coincidentally a couple of years ago I was asked if I would go and hold the fort for six weeks or so in the Capital for a friend, who needed a temporary Remedial i/c in his Mozambique operation. I declined as gracefully as I could (by pricing myself way out of the market and pointing out my A level French was passed almost 46 years ago, but really my days of working 24/7 are long past). Right Brain was quite cross are her best college friend’s son was there with the American Embassy – I should have sent her, instead!
    I would be interested in seeing your journal – do you have your own wordpress site?

  106. CWJ – If you click on Sipu’s name under his gravatar in a comment, you will be taken to his private site. Alternatively, there is a link in the ‘Bogroll’ in the sidebar. Incidentally, you have already visited Sipu’s blog.

  111. You remind me of the cartoon of the couple lying in bed: the sleeping young woman has a “post-it” note stuck to her forehead with her name written on it…

  113. Hi, cwj. Thanks for the competition.

    For the last three weeks I have been taking my camera to work (before sunrise) and from work (after sunset) secure in the knowledge that I had the good fortune to live in Embra and would get a reasonable photo as and when we had a half decent day. Unfortunately, I had not allowed for the fact that I have the misfortune to live in Embra and we only get a half decent day every other decade or so.

    So, with time running out, I panicked and went up Arthur’s Seat after work – it’s what we do! Weather pretty dire yet again and no tripod but here’s an entry for what it’s worth. I realise it’s not very good but I really enjoy your enthusiasm for the subject and thank you again for inspiring me to give it a go at least.

    And, to be fair, Embra looks pretty good however rubbish any particular photo of it, in my opinion.

  115. John – Thank you for contributing in the face of such appalling odds, weather-wise. It has been absolutely dreich for much of the UK, so it’s not just Embra…although up here one end or other of the day usually provides a sight of the sun. The Free Poll only takes ten nominations I think so I have replaced OZ’s second entry with your “Twilight over Edinburgh.” In any case OZ had confirmed it was Kangaroo Point he wanted as his entry and not the later one, which was very good!
    Any further entries will have to be voted for by comment.
    I can’t get into the Poll myself this morning on this site, as I suspect Bearsy may have disabled it until the starting gun. Bearsy, correct, or is it a glitch with WP?

  117. Attention ColdwaterJohn – I have done nothing to your poll.

    As I explained earlier, and have repeated in the “About Polls” page under the Polls Menu, neither Boadicea nor I can access anyone’s polls; they are private to you. All we can do is to display them, by using their PollDaddy reference number.

    Your poll is accessible from the Chariot.

    New Information – If you create your poll by using the Poll facility found in the Dashboard sidebar (rather than through a PollDaddy page), you are not limited to 10 items. 😀

  118. Thanks for that input Bearsy. I have no idea why it was not appearing for some time, and then began to appear without any further input from me – maybe a glitch in PollDaddy. If I ever do another one, I shall follow your advice to avoid the limitation on choice of answers.

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