Saturday Sfumato

Sometimes it happens here in the late day, if conditions are right - a bit of natural sfumato. I blogged about it last May, when smoke still hung in the sky from the Sierra Madre fire.

Our sky seemed clear enough yesterday, though I woke up to fog in the early morning. This photo was taken as the sun began to set. Perhaps what I captured was late day moisture caught in the lateral rays. What I love is the gradations of sharpness, the muted colors. (You've got to enlarge this one.) I've pointed my camera at this same field before and gotten purples and pinks.

Somewhere in this picture are coyotes, rabbits, snakes, bats, bugs, squirrels and a couple of bobcats. It is very tough getting them to pose like this.