Wild Sunset

An unusual type of sunset for the Pac Northwest

This was not the kind of clouds we usually see here in the Seattle area. Puffy clouds, low clouds, maybe some streaky or swirly high clouds. Rarely something complex like this.

I grabbed this with an extreme wide-angle lens, the Laowa 9mm f/5.6. It has a 135º angle of view, and as long as you keep the camera upright, is provides a rectilinear (undistorted, mostly) view. There is some stretching into the corners, but that is a minor issue for such an extremely wide-angle lens.

Taken at f/11, ISO 100, 1/160th second. Handheld exposure (no time to set up a tripod, it was fading very quickly). The fading helped, in that the darker blue of the sky makes the high clouds and strange colors stand out.

Here is the view straight up, which is even stranger and more colorful:

Really a very, very strange sky for our part of the world.