PURPLE LIGHT

Approximately 15 minutes after sunset there is sometimes a phenomenon called “Purpur Licht” in German (Purple Light). This is not the same as the “afterglow” where clouds are illuminated by the sun in a red light. Purple light is a physical phenomenon and created by dust particles high up in the atmosphere, for example, Sahara dust.

It needs two different kinds of reflections in the atmosphere to let us see the purple light. The observer sees a red light and a blue light. These two sources are getting mixed by our eyes and in our brain and we see a purple light.

October-November evenings are often a good time for purple light when the sky is clear. There are various conditions responsible for purple light. For example, pressure, wind, or what kind of dust particles are in the air are factors.

Sometimes it’s not exactly clear what the reason for this phenomenon is when the purple light is very intense but the eruption of a volcano or a bushfire could increase the number of particles in the atmosphere. The legendary paintings of romantic painter W. Turner with the memorable red sky are perhaps influenced by real intense purple light and afterglow due to volcanic activity.

Photography of purple light is easy. Mostly you need a place where you have no obstacle like high buildings or trees in the west. Always good to have the camera on a tripod since the eye is a bit tricked: the sky looks brighter as it is. I was going for a jog when I saw too late that this could be a very interesting sunset, thus my equipment wasn’t appropriate for the situation. Sometimes you could rest your camera on a stone or on the edge of a wall but here I was in the middle of some fields. I didn’t want to have a high ISO thus the result has its limits but demonstrates what purple light is. If you use photoshop or another post-pro software careful use of saturation could underline the purple light effect.

For a better effect, it is also worth to check an astronomical calendar and look out for an evening with a clear sky when Venus or Jupiter is visible in the west or even better a planet and the crescent moon having a rendezvous in the sky.

Sometimes also clouds in the stratosphere could create an intense “red sky phenomenon”. This time however it wasn’t stratospheric clouds or volcanic ash it was simply a few warm days with a clear sky during the Indian summer in October.

Winter Twilight Photography

At the end of the year 2013 it was most of the time cloudy or it was raining in the Berlin area, but in-between there were impressing sunsets when the sky cleared up for some hours. Cold days and a clear sky in winter offer interesting possibilities for photography, mostly because the air is very dry then and the horizon appears very clear without dust. Shortly after sunset, which was at 4.00pm on Dec.30, the first stars were to be seen. In the southwest there was still a rest of daylight but most of the sky was already very dark. This might be not a spectacular weather situation but I found it a good opportunity to do some long exposure photography. Some pictures of the series below where taken with 10 seconds time of exposure. Of course, the stars don’t appear as dots but as small streaks then and airplanes leave a big streak but with a wide angle the effects seemed tolerable. To me it’s a better option rather than to use ISO’s over 800 since even with a good DSLR noise becomes a problem. Minimum light also suggests normally an open visor but my experience is to try F16 or even F22 is interesting for desired effects and for more detail. It’s worth to do some experiments.
The only must is a tripod and preferable a remote release. If temperatures drop below zero you must both think about the equipment and of course the photographer. Battery power gets reduced as we know from car batteries (the best idea would be to have a spare battery and keep it warm inside your jacket) and if a camera is brought from a warm environment into the cold check first if there is fog on the lens. If it gets really cold it’s important to keep your hands and body warm. It’s worth to wait how the light situation changes and what opportunities come up, but standing around for an hour or much longer when the temperature drops below zero is not fun. I use for example a North Face jacket which served me well for some years, since it kept me always warm and is very light and thin at the same time. It’s also important that the jacket doesn’t make movements difficult and has some bigger pockets. Finally a flashlight is very important since it’s getting dark very fast in the winter.

This is not a guideline but mostly a collection of experience when I repeatedly did pictures after sunset in different situations in winter. The majority of the pictures were taken at lake Wannsee in Berlin. During the summer ships pick up tourists in this harbour for sightseeing tours on the several lakes around Berlin. The bridge is the famous “Glienicker Brücke” between Potsdam and Berlin where KGB and CIA exchanged captured agents during the Cold War.

The pics in Berlin where taken in a moonless night on December 30, 2013. At 5.00 pm there were still the summer star-signs as Lyra visible in the west. The following days proved that clear days are still rare in this winter. A series of depressions coming from the west and which created a lot of storm damage in England and Western Europe led to cloudy skies most of the time in North-East Germany.