Vibrant light from the Golden Dreams 2, Berowra Waters, NSW

In the Good Old Days, a landscape photographer would look up and see if they thought there would be a good sunset. You got to know what clouds looked good. Fast forward to 2021 and the world got a tad dominated by apps. It’s all Low cloud, Medium Cloud, and High cloud percentages. Generally, you want 75 – 100% high cloud to get the lovely colours with a gap on the horizon to the west.

Except tonight. I looked out the window, and there was lots of low/medium clouds, in a real shelf pattern, with the gap I needed to the west. If the sun were to light from below that lot, well… (and no I didn’t look at the app). For once I arrived well in time. Set up in a good position, and waited. It’s a long way down from up there. Initially I tried a few practice panoramas to make sure the tripod was level as the sun lowered.

And then this happened. A half-and-half ‘Golden Dreams’ (well, Golden Dreams 2) in the sky. If you look carefully at the setting sun, there is a little wisp of vertical cloud which has acted as a ‘curtain’ and altered the way the light falls to the north and south. Vibrant light from the sun illuminated the underside of the cloud shelf. Then the  glow reflected strongly off the water way below. Many, many, shades of straw, gold, and bronze filled the frame with colour.

I made this as a 3×2 ‘standard’ ratio of the panorama I posted previously.