Sunset Photography

I decided to write a little bit about Sunset/Sunrise photography today. This week @derangedvisions has his weekly #derangedphotography contest and the theme is Painting the Sky. I went through my photos I had taken of various sunsets throughout the years and ended up having my daughter pick one for it.

While I by no means, am a super photography expert, I've learned a few tips throughout the years I would like to share. A lot of times I've seen some amazing skies out there and think that I've gotta grab my camera to get this perfect shot, but then it doesn't turn out the way I saw it with my eyes. The rich colors and crazy lighting are there in front of me, but my pictures don't always equate to what I saw.

So I got to experimenting with different settings, talking to other photographers, and got to reading. It helped me improve quite a bit from my original pictures I was taking.

Plan Ahead

While a lot of times it's hard to plan ahead when you are out and the sky just lights on fire with the perfect sunset, sometimes you need to plan ahead. Scout different locations beforehand and find subjects that you find appealing while the sun is up. Doing this will give you an idea of the location you'd like to shoot in. Also it would help plan your composition so you don't go in blindly shooting the sky. Having a location in mind that you know you'd like to shoot may take some patience. You may have to spend a couple days heading there to take photos because one night the sunset may not be what you were looking for, while another may have the right clouds and everything may align for you.

Shoot at different focal lengths

Using different focal lengths and lenses can make drastically different photos. A wide angle will can bring in a lot of your surroundings or the sky. I shot the above photo with a 15-30mm lens. I really liked the clouds in the sky that night at sea and wanted to show off the sky.

While this photo I used my zoom lens to zoom in on the mountains because the sun had already set behind them and I liked the color coming up from them. Which brings me to my next tip-

Silhouettes

Shooting silhouettes can be lots of fun and create some impactful photographs. For shooting these you may need to change a few settings on your camera. You may want to switch to your Aperture priority mode as well. From there you'll want to change your bracketing to underexpose your photos. That way the objects you want to be silhouetted will be darker. It may take a couple shots to get it right.

Shoot a couple different exposures

Taking pictures into the sun can be difficult to get what you want right. Either the foreground is going to be extremely underexposed, or the sky is going to be WAY overexposed. One thing I'm still learning how to do is HDR photography. The photo above is one of my first attempts at this. Using a Tripod is a must. I took 5 different photos of the same scene and different exposure levels. I shot -2 bracketing, then went up to -1 and so forth until I was +2. Then in photoshop you can ad them together into an HDR photograph. That way it pretty much takes the exposed parts of each photo and adds them into one overall.

The camera I have recently got did not have an instruction manual. But another trick using this that most new cameras have is the auto bracketing. You set it to take so many photos and what exposures you want to do. Then it will fire off a quick procession of photos at once so you don't have to manually change it. It is something I need to dig into Nikon's website to learn how to do.

Experiment

Sometimes it's best to just experiment with different things as you take pictures. It's one thing I love about digital photography. You have as many free redos as you want. You take a picture that didn't quite turn out right, you can just delete it and shoot another. Where as film you didn't get to see how exactly it turned out until after you developed them.

The shot above of the CIWS on my ship was a photo I took several trying to get it right. I wanted both the sky and the CIWS exposed. This was before I knew about bracketing and HDR photography. I set up my camera on a tripod and then used my external flash to light up the CIWS. Finally got it to how I wanted.

OH! ONE MORE TIP

Turn Around

While looking and taking photos of the sunset is awesome. Sometimes it's best to turn around. As the sun sets light changes. It's always a good habit to look behind and see how the light is painting everything around you. You may even get a shot better than the sunset you went out to take.

Thank you for stopping by today. If you have any other tips let me know in the comments. I'm always up for learning new things. Have an awesome week!