I was over in Woolacombe yesterday to get some sunset photos. I thought I’d park up on Marine Drive to get a more elevated angle. I took a series of images using various wide and telephoto lenses. Just as the sun slipped over the Horizon I witnessed a vivid flash as I shot a burst of frames.
This is the unedited full-frame of the first exposure from the sequence.
Below is the cropped sequence showing the legendary Green-flash Phenomenon. These are cropped JPEG conversions from the original RAW files. I’ve not applied any image correction to these shots so I don’t end up with lots of claims of Photoshop hoax.
These images don’t do justice to the FLARE perceived by my eye. As I looked through my 80-200/f2.8 there was a visible brightening accompanied by a sort of ring flare…bit like a special effect.
Seems like there’s all sorts of folklore and sailors stories attached to this phenomenon. I mentioned it to my local shop keeper this evening and they said it was possibly associated with happening at Uluru, also referred to as Ayers Rock, Not sure of the provenance of that though. I have to emphasise again how vivid the effect was. The light levels were low so the flash may not have been Bright but it did make me gasp and start “chimping” straight away. Just to confirm what I though I’d seen.
All pictures on this post were taken on the same evening on the 28th Jan 2009 on Marine Drive, Woolacombe, North Devon.
wow ….. amazing !
Your photos are exquisit! I just “googled” to see if anyone could tell me what was a “green flash at sunset”. The question came around in a “bucket list” e-mail and one of the items was, “Have you ever seen the green flash at sunset?” Your photos make us curious to actually see one now…I’ll definitely keep my eye out from now on. Thank you for the web information…Jane from Houston, Texas