My work travel sometimes take me to the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles, but in the past I had never brought along my camera. My previous trips were always in the winter (or whatever passes for winter in LA), which meant shorter days and less opportunity to get out and watch the sunset. But on my recent trip in late-April, I knew I would finally have a chance to see the beach on a wonderfully sunny late afternoon.

Last November we took a scuba diving trip to the Maldives. While we spent most of the trip on a liveaboard boat, we did spend a little bit of time visiting a couple of the Maldives’ wonderful islands. One of those islands was Dhangethi, which is a popular stopover for liveaboards carrying divers and other tourists. Unlike many islands in the Maldives, Dhangethi is not a resort but rather is a home for the locals, and while it still has the usual souvenir shops found anywhere tourists go, it also has little streets with real homes and real people.

I previously posted my photo of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel from my trip to Paris last May, and I loved the combination of the arc and the crazy sunset behind it. After an earlier rainstorm, the clearing clouds provided a gorgeous canvas for a sunset of bright colors. I had already taken several photos of the arc as a whole (my previous post), and I was looking for another photo that made good use of the light and color in the sky.

I have so many fond memories of watching sunsets on the west coast, and I always try to catch them whenever I can. There’s something magical about seeing the sun drop down and then disappear below a wall of waves – giving a final valedictory glow to the continent before darkness. When I visited Carmel-by-the-Sea last month, I knew I wanted to catch that same experience with a photo from the beach.

Weather can sometimes be surprising, but few weather experiences have been more surprising than spending an entire trip in the warm Scottish sunshine. Now I’m sure Scotland gets some sun here and there, but this trip was sunny in a way that felt more Mediterranean. The sky in Inverness had that look that I associate with summers in America, where the air was bright, warm, and hazy. This often causes me trouble for photos because the haze tends to mute light and color, while at the same time there are usually very few interesting clouds to balance a scene. Fortunately, Inverness gave me something to work with during this sunset.