Failed Venus transit

Ok, so I got up early to try and see the Venus transit from sunrise. As you can see in the photo it was a bit cloudy at the horizon and clear sky above. Actually if the photo had shown more above me it would've shown a completely clear sky above my head. Unfortunately the Sun is not above my head at sunrise. The clouds moved from North to South which meant the Sun was behind the clouds pretty much the whole time. It was also too windy to project the Sun onto a piece of white paper. Excuses, excuses, excuses. Truth is I should've been more prepared and gotten a piece of welder glass or some "eclipse glasses" so I at least could've seen the transit in the gaps between the clouds, but hey, only 105 years until next time. I'm sure I will have been able to prepare for it by then...

Yes I know there are a lot of trees in the way in the photo, but I was on my way back from a big open field (a.k.a. a golf course) when I took it.

The little house on the mountain... revisited

The view of most of my hometown from the top of the mountain.
That's the ocean in the background.

In a post a few weeks ago I said that I would come back and take new photos when there's leaves on the trees. So here are some photos I took today.

The sky got a bit overexposed because the sun was too close.
At least there's leaves on the trees now.

Looking down the steps from the top. It was scary walking down.

The view of some of the rest of the town.

Train tracks in the mist

Last year I took a photography class. One of the assignments we had was to take photos around sunrise. So one August morning I got up at 4am and took a walk. Unfortunately it was foggy that morning so I couldn't see the sunrise at all. I did however get this photo of the train tracks disappearing into the mist.

The little house on the mountain

I took this photo when I was walking to the unemployment office today. It's the old water tower in my hometown. 179 steps (according to the information sign below the steps but I haven't counted them myself) to the top. It was built in 1897 and the building itself isn't very big. Only like 2-3 square metres or so. The water was/is(?) inside the mountain from what I remember from school.
If you go all the way up there you get a great view of the town and can see all the way to the ocean. The problem is that, as you can see, there's nothing to hold onto while going up/down the steps. The old handrail was broken in several places so they removed the whole thing a few years ago and haven't put a new one up... yet. Maybe they never will.
Maybe I'll make a follow-up post on this one in the summer when there's actually leaves on the trees.

Edit: Took some photos of it again today.

Weird thing in a night photo

The other week I was testing what it would look like if I took a night photo towards North and had a tree or two that's lit up in the foreground. This 30 second exposure didn't turn out too bad (besides the fact that I missed North and Polaris isn't in the shot), but what's that up in the sky?

Here's a 100% crop of it. Part of it looks like clouds, but the pink/purple/yellow part does not. I took more than one shot that night and this photo is the only one that has this anomaly in it.

If anyone knows what caused it (I'm sure it's some kind of optical phenomenon), let me know.

Jupiter and Venus

Last night Jupiter and Venus were pretty close together. I had originally planned to go out and take a photo when they were closer to the horizon, but since the thick dark clouds came in fast I had to put on my 14mm Samyang lens and take a quick photo before they disappeared completely.

Edit: Today we had a clear sky so I went out and got this photo using my 30mm Sigma lens.

Photos of the sky

One thing that I like to take photos of is the sky. Not just the night sky. Also not just sunsets even if a sunset can be very beautiful. After I've taken photos of the sky I usually use Canon's Digital Photo Professional program to edit the RAW files. Sometimes the result becomes amazing and sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on if I overdo it or not.
Here's a few examples of sky photos that I have edited like that. The left side is the unedited and the right side is the edited.

Taken during a thunderstorm at night

Taken at sunrise

Taken late in the afternoon

Taken at sunset

Taken at sunset

Here's an example of when the sunset looks that colourful even without the help of photo editing software.

Taken at sunset and no editing done