June light

With this title I don't mean that June is like a soft drink without sugar. I mean it in photographic terms. It seems that every season - every month even - has its share of unique lighting that begs to be chased.
In addition, different times of day require different ways of looking for motifs.
One evening I stuck my head out the door after dinner as I usually do - to check out the light - and saw some awesome clouds forming in the North. I dropped the dishtowel and grabbed my camera. I knew I didn't have much time because colors as beautiful as these change quickly. Some neighbors were standing out on their balcony having a smoke and enjoying the scene, so I asked them if I could take a picture of them.
By the way, I learned that bit of wisdom from Jim Palik, who told me, "When you have a sky like that, put something in front of it and make some good pictures!"
By the time I had walked up to the street behind our house to get a panoramic shot of East Stuttgart, the magic was gone for that evening. Sometimes there's just nothing as depressing as boring light!

A few days later, I headed out of the house in the evening, not having had time to do much photography the previous week and just itching to make some pictures. I figured I'd make the best of  the last rays of evening light.
Walking down to the footbridge over the Neckar River, I started doing double exposures by simply shifting my camera mid-shutter from one scene to the next. Then I realized that with my white balance set to a cool temperature, the street lights and the dark blue of the evening sky formed perfect contrasting colors.

Tilting the camera to a 90° angle resulted in swooping lines and alien-looking landscapes. Some DSLRs can create multiple exposures in-camera, as you could back in the analog days. With the Sony Alpha line, you have to get creative.

Swirling the camera around also created some very interesting pictures.

As I was heading back home, I tried my hand at a minimalistic shot. Minimalism in photography is not so easy when living in a large city. If you travel to the Arctic or live near the sea, it is probably easier. This time I moved the camera back and forth but the light source was the monochrome reflection of a streetlight on a huge heating pipe.

As June came to an end, the thunderstorms hit. One evening I watched - and photographed - the spectacle from my front porch for 45 minutes. At first, my eight-second exposures just missed the flashes of lightning. Then I got in the groove and captured some nice shots.

It really doesn't get much better than this for June light!