Sunset Along Interstate 5

I spent part of today driving on Interstate 5 up into Northern California. Most of the day was a blue sky day. Not a cloud in sight. I stopped off in Weed to get some dinner and when I got back outside and hit the road again, the sky had just erupted into this crazy sunset cloudscape.

iPhone 3GS • ©2009 James Duncan Davidson

This photo was a quick iPhone shot from the rest area just north of Weed. It’s a pretty impressive sight, no? To think, if I had spent any more time eating dinner, I would have missed the show. The iPhone photo here doesn't quite do the scene justice, however. The auto white balance algorithm (which always works against sunsets) slurped quite a bit of the intensity out of the yellows and pushed in too much blue. I’ve tweaked things back and forth a bit in Lightroom, but since it’s a JPG image, the basic color balance decisions are baked in and there’s not a whole lot of leeway.

Never fear. I didn’t just rely on the iPhone for this one. After I shot the photograph above, I pulled out the D700 and managed to get a few frames off before the sky opened up and dumped rain on me. And, of course, I shot in 14-bit RAW so that I could fine tune the white balance and capture a lot more of the range out of the scene. Here’s the result:

Nikon D700 • ©2009 James Duncan Davidson

That’s more like it. That’s the scene I remember looking at just a few hours ago. And yes, it was that intense. The iPhone did a pretty good job (especially for a tiny chip cell phone cam), but at some point, you gotta pull out the big guns. I only wish I had found a better place to stop than a rest area. Sometimes you gotta take what nature gives you.

Tomorrow, I’m probably cutting over the mountains and out to the coast. It was hot inland today and I could use a bit of time time sitting above breaking waves.