In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

OK, the above photo of a wave crashing on the rocks on the island of Kauai, Hawaii is an obvious example of the color blue. My first thought was to review the dozens, probably hundreds, of images that feature the ocean blue. Science tells me the sky is blue because the atmosphere filters out most of the red side of the color spectrum. In the early morning and late afternoon, those reds return as the sun is reflected through at a lower angle. The ocean, lakes, and rivers are blue because they are simply reflecting the sky.

This week’s challenge from Patti Moed asks us to focus on the color blue and its many connotations. She writes, “For this week’s challenge, share your interpretation of blue—the color, the mood, or the time of day.”  You can read her entire challenge post here. Regular readers of this blog will notice I’ve borrowed a couple of shots from a recent Travel Tuesday post of mine featuring the United States Navy’s flight demonstration team, the Blue Angels. A couple of weekends ago, they appeared in Fargo and I was there to capture and share some of those images with you. Being the aviation nut that I am, I had to include a couple of those most recent photos here.

Just before and after sunset, one of the photographer’s best times for outdoor shots is known as the “blue hour”. The image of a Phoenix Arizona sunset below is captured in transition from the last red hues of sunset into the half-light of the blue hour. In recent months, I’ve been reprocessing many of my older images to reflect new skills and new tools to improve the process. When it came to exporting the final import to publish, I increased the resolution of the photos to provide a higher quality image. In most browsers, you can click on any of the images to get a larger, more detailed view.

John Steiner