Light and Lighting Outdoors and "The Moment"

         I am posting these links for my Aunt Marie who is a talented artist. I know she is a Rembrandt fan and might enjoy this special about him. It's in 4 parts and offers an insight to the artist and his work. I wasn't a big fan of his work until I saw this well done documentary about him. I don't know if she is a fan of the Impressionists but the mini series linked in the next paragraph is also well done. You have to wonder where art would be now had it not been for the perseverance of artists like them and Van Gogh.
         In this great mini series about the French Impressionists, it is obvious that Claude Monet was obsessed with light. Some years back I was at the National Gallery in London and saw Water Lillies there and thought to myself I saw this in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art too. I later learned he painted that 30 some odd times. Each time it appeared different to him. In this series at one point in time he was painting on 4 canvasses at one time shifting from one to the other as the light would change. I am learning this lesson with my photography the hard way.
         After leaving for work the other day with my camera and tripod in hand I drove east around dawn and saw the sky lit up in spectacular pink and blue ribbons glimmering in the sunlight which was still below the horizon. So I did what any other kook would do. I pulled of the road at a nearby farm field and jumped out with the camera. Without sacrificing image quality I went with an ISO setting of 400. I didn't want a grainy image but the shutter speed was only 1/8 of a second. Too slow for a hand held shot but I took it anyway as I have seen great lighting slip away in the blink of an eye too many times before. This is what I got.

Then this

I was afraid the images would be blurred (and they are) from being hand held at such a slow shutter speed. I reached in the truck and set up the tripod which was no more than 2 minutes of elapsed time and this is what I saw when I looked up.

Not quite the same, is it? My fiery sunrise, "the moment" was gone almost in the blink of an eye. It goes that fast and not just with sunrises. That bird on a branch that you hope will turn for a better view and flies away instead or the cloud that moves in front of the sun and kills your nice warm golden sunlight in the setting or rising sun. All in all though, I am glad I captured what I did. Words could never do it justice.