DSLR Photography Forum

It was a stinking hot day here today considering summer ended a month ago (42degC today). Luckily I spent most of it indoors surrounded by aircon.

But I did decide to go to my local beach for a bit of a swim before the sun went down as an alternative to going for a bike ride this evening... and took my camera with me as I knew I'd be there for sunset.

I got there just at that time of day when the few swimmers that were there were packing up to go and were being replaced by people coming in for an evening of fishing (there is a jetty nearby that seems popular).

The sunset wasn't all that spectacular in itself I don't think, but it did throw out some lovely light and I managed to get a couple of shots I was quite happy with.
The first one in particular I like, as the wind-swept tree seems to really compliment the shapes of the clouds behind it, and the colours and warm subtle light on the tree were beautiful in the scene and seemed to capture quite well in the photo. I also like the little clump of grass at the bottom of the tree.
Both the first and second photo seem to work quite well as monochrome images as well, but I think I prefer them in colour.
The third shot isn't anything special though... "just another sunset". The bird and the ship are the only things preventing it from putting me to sleep

All images have had their tone curves edited in photoshop to alter exposure, and had some minor cropping and noise-reduction, but no other changes have been made.

I'll try to stop posting more images of trees silhoetted against the sky, as I'm sure some people are sick of them already But they do make interesting subjects and thanks to the feedback I received from my last lot of sunset pics, I actually wanted to have another go at some sunset silhoette photos to see if I could do better. The lighting conditions were quite different today, but I still tried to make the most of what was there. At least I was much more aware of the lighting and composition this time around, and was trying to have something interesting in the foreground or even trying to explore a nice relationship between the foreground and background (which the first two do I think).

Thoughts? Improvements? Suggestions for how you might have approached the shot? Anyone?
Thanks in advance...







I can't wait until my DSLR arrives and I can get wider focal lengths than 38mm (the effective wide limit of my Oly C750UZ).

Cheers
Adrian

Hello Adrian,

Sorry but again just compliments from me on the nice pictures, no critics you can learn from I did come up with another crop for image 3. See what you think, might be a bit too cramped on the bottom...
I had a look in your gallery and there were 2 pics that I found absolutely stunning (pelicans and 1 from a house which u can see through some trees).

As for the sunsets, just keep them coming... Maybe even explain your camera settings next time if you don't mind for noobs like me.

Jacco

Hi Jacco,

Thanks for your kind words and suggested crop.
I agree that in hindsight, the silhoetted scrub in the foreground of that sunset photo are distracting, and the version you suggest does draw a lot more attention towards the birds, ship, and even the island... which are more interesting than the bush.
Unfortunately I was too lazy to walk down to the beach to take a photo with more water in the foreground instead of the scrub, so there is no getting around the cramping at the bottom. My excuse was the sun was dropping fast, and I would have wasted 2 or 3 valuable minutes getting down to the beach... which is all the time it takes the sun to drop from where it was in these photos to the horizon.

As far as camera settings go, today I just slapped it in Aperture Priority mode and adjusted the Exposure Compensation from time to time to suit my needs.
When I was shooting towards the sun, I would have the aperture closed up, and would still often be using shutter speeds around 1/1000 second.
When I was shooting away from the sun, I would have to open the aperture pretty much right up, as I was taking all shots hand-held and in the fading light I needed the shutter to be as fast as possible. Even so, it was hovering around the 1/60 to 1/80 sec by the time I packed up to go (at f/2.8 and ISO 50).
My general rule is to try to expose so the lightest part of the clouds just "touches" white, but keeps all detail in the clouds. At all costs I try to avoid blowing out the sky, but at the same time I try to get the exposure as light as I can and then play with the curves in photoshop later to re-create the contrast in the sky (often exaggerating it for effect).
If I find that by doing this, the foreground is too underexposed for my liking (which is often is when you expose for the sky), I generally take a 2nd identical shot but expose for the foreground (which often blows the entire sky out). I can then combine the "good sky" with the "good foreground" in photoshop later. This technique usually requires a tripod to get exactly the same shot for each exposure for easy matching-up in photoshop. I didn't use this technique today however, but I did mask out the tree in the first photo and set its levels seperately to the sky to keep the subtle lighting on it.

I was looking at that 2nd photo (which has a bit of a fish-eye lens effect with the curved framing and tree branches reaching in like they do), and had a bit more of a play with it in photoshop.
The result is what I would call a "reflection of sky on water" and although completely fictional, I find it seems to suit the image. The ripples might be a bit obvious and over-the-top though



Thanks also for your kind words about my gallieries and encouragement to keep the sunset pics coming. I enjoy taking them and they are helping me to improve my photography, but I don't want them to just become cliche.
Its funny you should mention the pelicans (which is one of my favourites too), but that shot was taken at the very beach I was at today (about 300 yards from where these shots were taken). In fact, I saw one of the pelicans was sitting on one of the same poles! I think the pelicans are regulars there, as the jetty those poles are beside was getting quite a collection of fishermen by the time I was leaving, and pelican's aren't too stupid when it comes to free food.

Thanks
Adrian

Thanks Adrian, you have given another few priceless tips like trying to get the brightest part of the sky to "touch the white". Also good tip to take 2 pics of same scene with auto-exposure. I just got my 1-gig card today so I think I will be using a lot of auto bracketing now anyway.

Cheers for the time to explain how you do your stuff. It's so much apreciated, and hopefully not just by me.

I really like #1 and #2 - they're not your usual sunset shots - especially with the lovely deep blue colours.

Clouds are awesome too.

I think all 3 shots are beautiful. You also tell the story very well. You should be a writer. The only thing that bothered me was the tiny spec on the left in the water in photo # 3.