Crepuscular Rays on St Lucia

Crepuscular means relating to twilight and is a term applied to many such phenomena: for example there are crepuscular owls which actively hunt in twilight.

The rays are caused by the shadows of clouds, cast by the recently-set Sun from below the horizon. They can create beautiful sights just after sunset, as in this images taken from the northwest coast of St Lucia in August 2015.

Nikon D810A  with Nikkor 24-70 zoom lens at 56mm, 1/200 sec exposure at f/7.1 and ISO-800.

Crepuscular Sky from Cheshire

Very much closer to home, crepuscular rays over my house in Cheshire in June 2015.

Nikon D810A, Nikkor 24-70 zoom at 24mm, 1/320-second at f/9, ISO 800.

Key West

Crepuscular rays over Sunset Key just off Key West, Florida. The horizontal streaks are not faults in the film but aircraft contrails from two old biplanes that had just flown over.

A rare non-digital exposure: taken with an Olympus AZ Superzoom 35mm compact camera with Kodak Gold ISO-100 colour negative film on 15 September 1995 (as confirmed by the date printed on the negative by the camera).