Magic of a Sunset

After seeing one post on Pinterest I had a spur of the moment decision to take pictures of the sunset, which seems easy but it definitely is not. The mechanical side of it is simple, for a silhouette picture I had to drop the triangle balance (which I discussed last week) to below the equal line of zero. The difficult part is staging the picture, including what level you are taking the picture at, and what is in the foreground or background.

This video outlines what a silhouette is and how to do it (particularly with a sunset)

When I first started taking these pictures I was struggling to get the picture to match what I was seeing in the view finder. I would change the shutter speed and it would either be too bright or too dark so I decide to take pictures at a variety of shutter speeds and look at them on the computer instead. The camera screen is too small and does not always show the resolution so it is easier once they are on the computer.

One thing that I did not think of when taking the pictures was how am I standing. I did not realize until I went back and looked at the pictures on my computer that my horizon line was in the middle of the pictures. Though this is not particularly appealing to the eye, it is even worse is silhouettes because of the drastic contrast. For example, this picture has light, a subject and landscape but the horizon line makes half of the picture completely black.

The other area I was struggling with was having the silhouette of anything other than a tall standing tree. If you have any suggestions for objects for silhouettes I would be happy to read about them in the comments. I wanted to take the picture either with leaves or a bridge as the silhouette but they did not turn out as well.

I have gone out a few times after this but because of the rain there was not as much of a sunset.  Even though they sky was not as colourful, I was able to use the river to practice taking pictures of reflections, since I was planning on doing that as the theme for next week. It was so much fun because the water was so still. The only area that I struggled with was where to put the line between the water and land, I could either put it in the upper or lower third of the picture. I ended up going with both but I think I prefer the lower thirds being land and water rather than the upper third.

My goal for next time is to practice dropping my ISO and finding better lighting so my pictures do not become grainy.

My favorite pictures over all from this week were…