How To Take Sunset Photos

Agios is located in North Evia, just a few kilo­me­ters from the famous ther­mal sources of Edip­sos. The below pic­tures from Agios have been shot in July 2010. The images from Astir Beach are from August 2010.

[frame_left]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/agios-sunset-L1020376-410.jpg[/frame_left]Evia located north of Attica; it’s the sec­ond largest Greek island after Crete. The best known place in North Evia is Edip­sos. The cura­tive ther­mal springs have been known for thou­sands of years; from the old Greeks to the Romans and more recently to Sir Win­ston Churchill, Onas­sis and many other well known personalities.

Sun­sets are a beau­ti­ful nat­ural spec­ta­cle. The ever chang­ing light con­di­tions under the declin­ing sun offer great pho­to­graphic oppor­tu­ni­ties and challenges.

Every­body can take sun­set pic­tures, it’s not all that dif­fi­cult: just point your dig­i­tal cam­era and shoot … the auto­matic set­tings will do the rest. If you want how­ever take a more stun­ning sun­set, the one that knocks even an ice-bear out of his socks, then you may con­sider some of the fol­low­ing aspects and try them out.

In order to take a smash­ing pic­ture, you need dust and or clouds. The red and orange col­ors result from micro-particles in the air. [highlight2]Dust[/highlight2] can come from any­where, pol­lu­tion helps to break light, smoke, fog and so on. A sec­ond ele­ment for great effects are [highlight2]Clouds[/highlight2].

[frame_right]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/sunset-in-agios-L1020017-410.jpg[/frame_right]Clouds add struc­ture, inter­est­ing light effects and in as much as I am con­cerned, I pre­fer the cloudy sky to the straight gra­di­ents result­ing from a cloud­less and dust-free atmosphere.

Look at your scenery and decide what’s more impor­tant to you: the sky of the fore­ground. The more beau­ti­ful your sky the more of it you want to ban on your photo. In gen­eral it’s of good advise to fol­low the rule of thirds.

The first image above fea­tures two hori­zons: one in the fore­ground and one in the back-ground. The fore­ground hori­zon is placed about on the lower third line, while the back-ground hori­zon is at the bor­ing 50% level. The sun is on the first third line from the left.

The sec­ond photo focuses clearly on the sky. The hori­zon is just below the one third line from the bottom.[frame_left]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/susnset-agios-L1020014-cut-300.jpg[/frame_left]

Apply­ing the rule of thirds will help to focus on the essen­tial aspects of the sun­set and adds ten­sion to the image. Of course there are always excep­tions and you may find your­self in a sit­u­a­tion where the totally bal­anced and cen­tered approach will reflect tran­quil­ity and desired har­mony; as usual, it will depend on the story you want to tell.

The sun­set is spec­tac­u­lar and usu­ally it becomes more spec­tac­u­lar if it’s seen in an inter­est­ing con­text. The fore­ground is what often gives the spe­cial touch” a few palm trees, a jetty, a bridge, peo­ple or most any object which adds a scale to your picture.

For the pur­pose of this post I add a photo from Kavouri beach in Vou­liag­meni, where the focus is on the busy foreground.[frame_right]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/vouliagmeni-beach-2.jpg[/frame_right]

Your cre­ativ­ity is the limit.

It seems to be a com­monly accepted rule, that fore­grounds are rep­re­sented as dark sil­hou­ettes, here­fore your flash should be set to “off”. In some cases how­ever it may be inter­est­ing to cap­ture some reflec­tions from a fore­ground, such as the ones you can see on the cars parked at Kavouri Beach or the small reflec­tions from the town in the fore­ground of the first image from Agios above. [highlight2]Context mat­ters and adds expression[/highlight2].

This is part of your com­po­si­tion. Exper­i­ment with the frame; make it wider or nar­rower depend­ing on the story you want to tell. It’s bet­ter to frame when you take the pic­ture than to cut the image in Pho­to­shop or any other image edi­tor. If you use zoom, make sure to remain within the range of your opti­cal zoom and don’t use the dig­i­tal zoom to pre­serve a max­i­mum of qual­ity, data and image size.

[frame_left]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/agios-sunset-sea-L1020375-410.jpg[/frame_left]

In Agios I thought there was an inter­est­ing frame focus­ing on the sea, sep­a­rat­ing the island of Evia from the main land (Attica).

The image is full of har­mony, smooth gra­di­ents and tints around the golden reflec­tion of the sun­set in the sea. The sky is of no impor­tance here; it’s all a mat­ter of light and tints in for my taste, very nice proportions.

This is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant and also most dif­fi­cult issue, namely with dig­i­tal cam­eras. In auto­matic set­tings, dig­i­tal cam­eras most often use matrix meter­ing which is reflected by an aver­age expo­sure and results in under-exposed pho­tos. The issue is due to the huge extremes between high­lights and shad­ows. [frame_right]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/sunset-in-agios-410-L1020373.jpg[/frame_right]

For best results, it’s rec­om­mended to use a a meter­ing device and meter the two extremes as well as the envi­ron­men­tal light and aver­age in func­tion of the pri­or­ity set by your com­po­si­tion and the story you want to tell.

The best advise is: just exper­i­ment! There is never just one right expo­sure as dif­fer­ent expo­sures will pro­duce great results, how­ever the effects are dif­fer­ent. Again, it’s a mat­ter of what you wish to express with your picture.

Pro­fes­sion­als use brack­et­ing and so may you. Most dig­i­tal cam­eras have a brack­et­ing func­tion; when you shoot,the cam will take 3 pic­tures: one as per auto­matic or man­u­ally set meter­ing, one with one F-stop higher and one with a F-stop lower. Say you take the pic­ture at 1/60 s at f/8, the cam will take a shot at these set­tings, then one at 1/60s at f/5.6 and one at 1/60 s at f/11. You will then be able to select the most expres­sive shot.

[frame_left]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/astir-beach-sunset-410-L1060315.jpg[/frame_left] [frame_right]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/astir-1060456–410.jpg[/frame_right]

The trou­ble is in the high­lights. Dig­i­tal cam­eras’ sen­sors are very sen­si­tive to light. The dan­ger con­sists thus in over­ex­po­sure of high­lights which boils down to a reduced dynamic range in the light areas of your pic­ture (lack of gra­di­ents, tex­ture and structure).Your dig­i­tal cam­era may have a iHigh­light function,which may rem­edy or dif­fer­ent pre­sets for the white balance.

Sun­set pic­tures as well as night pho­tos are inter­est­ing sub­jects for HDR pho­tog­ra­phy: shoot mul­ti­ple shots from your tri­pod at dif­fer­ent set­tings and mash them up in Pho­to­shop with the HDR fea­ture. The trick may help as the extreme light zones and the extreme darks may your cam­era cause to think for you (and that you def­i­nitely don’t want …) and select either pri­or­ity. The camera’s choice will most often result in a loss of dynamic range through­out the spec­trum, namely if you are shoot­ing with a lower end point and shoot cam.

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[frame_left]http://yorgonestoridis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/bianca.jpg[/frame_left]

This month’s Ycad­emy calls will deal with dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy and on improv­ing our qual­ity as pho­tog­ra­phers and photo editors

Also we are work­ing on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with the pur­pose of build­ing a high qual­ity Stock Photo and Media Port­fo­lio which will serve the needs of many a web­site devel­oper as well as graphic design­ers in the need of new, fresh, unique and exclu­sive media content.

Our daily calls start at 8 pm Lon­don time (GMT +1) and they take place at our easy to use online live con­fer­enc­ing center.

For more info and join­ing Ycad­emy, con­tact [highlight1]Bianca Gubalke[/highlight1]  directly from here:

[con­tact­form email=bianca@ycademy.com]

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Related posts:

1. Vou­liag­meni Sunset
2. iPhone 4 Photos
3. iPhone 4 Photos
4. iPhone 4 Pho­tos Alphorn
5. Astir Beach iPhone 4 Photos

Tags: Digital Sunsets, Expression Photography, HDR Photos, How To Take Sunset Photos, Sunset Images, Sunset Photos, Yorgo Nestoridis

This entry was posted on September 6, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Digital Photography, Media, Portfolio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.