No, it did not suddenly turn pitch black outside; that's just an artifact of my polarizing filter. (It's supposed to make the skies show up in that deep blue prized by photographers, but in this case it cut out rather too much light, so when the camera metered on the white surfaces of the church, the resulting exposure left the skies black. Even though it's not a technically very good photo, I've left it in here precisely because it illustrates this effect so well.
Copyright 2005, Garrett Wollman. All rights reserved. Photograph taken 2005-09-03.