Supsa Landscape

Hills at different distances create various shades of blues. Photographed off Supsa in Georgia. The scene was so beautiful that I hardly had to do any thinking. Just aim the camera, keep the horizon straight and click. Nature can brig in such peace and composure within.

Waterspout

A small tornado at sea, that's what is a waterspout. The massive column of the waterspout is actually composed of water droplets that are spinning at very high speed; as fast as 200 km/sec.
The ones in the Florida Keys are pretty well documented, photographed and are a regular in occurrence. This was on the Mediterranean sea, on 24th October 2009, about 1 Mile from my ship, around 7 AM in the morning. It was hard to spot the nearly transparent water column, but we managed to track it with the disturbance it created on the water surface.
The water in a waterspout is mostly confined to its lower portion, and may be either salt spray drawn up by the sea surface, or freshwater resulting from condensation due to the lowered pressure in the center of the vortex creating the spout. The air in waterspouts may rotate clockwise or counterclockwise,depending on the manner of formation. They are found
most frequently in tropical regions and sometimes in higher latitudes too.
Photo details: Lens: 75mm , f/4.5 , 1/320 sec, ISO- 400, Manual Focus (Since the contrast is poor, the camera was unable to autofocus on the waterspout and was seeking the clouds in the background)

One Evening at Aspropyrgos

f/4 for 2 sec
f/4 for 8 sec
On my Post on Friendly Animals I said that its not possible to use a tripod on board a ship because of the engine vibrations, but there are exceptions to it, like in here when my ship was at port in the beautiful suburb of Aspropyrgos in Greece. We were alongside in calm waters of the port with engines stopped. It was one of those rare instances when I could use a tripod, and I did use it to get a few twilight photographs. The sun has barely set off the horizon and lights were just coming on.Timing was crucial here as the bluish sky lasted for about 2 to 3 minutes only. A little later the sky would have become darker or a little earlier the lights could not be exposed well. The tiny stars in the second photo are probably Venus and Jupiter if my memory serves me right.
The photograph was exposed by one stop more than what the camera recommended. Inspite of placing the camera on a tripod and using a remore release the 8 second exposure on the second photograph has caused a slith blur. This is due to the miniscule vibrations of the ships generators. But this gives the image a soft look and I liked it a lot.