lorim222315 Loc: Twin City Area

I am trying to work on composition for sunsets. I feel that a sunset needs to be anchored with something more than just the sun. Does this image have too much? I am also wondering what you all feel makes for great colors in a sunset. Darker foregrounds and let the sun do the work, or reflections, or are sunset images best after the sun is down and the sky has the "afterburner" as my husband refers to it all.
Thanks for your comments and input.

(Download)

Frank2013 Loc: San Antonio, TX. & Milwaukee, WI.

For me, yes to your first question. I would say you could have a few pictures here. Cropped from middle up with ship sun and sky, cropped from middle down with ship sun and beach, or maybe cropped from both sides with any of the above combinations. Seems you foreground is competing with your background or vise-versa, I don't know maybe not. Only you know what you are trying to say here. Some pp would add a lot as this image just seems dark to me even though there is plenty of color.

lorim222315 Loc: Twin City Area

Competing - you have hit the nail on the head. I could not figure out what was bothering me about it. I will work on a different crop and see if I can adjust the colors.
Thanks for your input.

1stJedi Loc: Southern Orange County

I like the over all general feel of this photo, yet I too would crop it differently.

lorim222315 Loc: Twin City Area

I think a different crop will help. Thanks for your comments.

Billyspad Loc: The Philippines

I saw this on the Hog today and was blown away by it -

http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-286289-1.html

Yours photo has all the ingredients to make a super shot. I think I would crop the bottom to leave the bird and in from the right to leave the bird again. Enhance color in the top somewhere near the levels of the link I put here. Then I would need to look again to see what needs to done. If you have the Raw is it possible to get some detail out of that rocky outcrop?

By the way the link is to a guy here called Travesty who does some amazing stuff.
Hope that helps a little.

Billyspad Loc: The Philippines

I think you will find this will be removed as only one pic is allowed per thread. Im not sure you have improved it The bird has gone? Flown away huh.
I downloaded it and I think got it looking rather good. If you want to see result as I cant post it here pm me an email addy and I will send it to you.
Remember Im only an old hack here but did try my best huh.

mcveed Loc: Kelowna, British Columbia (between trips)

Sunset photos need to follow the same guidelines as any other landscape. I don't really like the expression "rule of thirds". I prefer to put it this way - draw a cross on your canvas with a horizontal line halfway up and a vertical line in the centre. Now don't put any compositional elements near those lines. Colour in sunsets is a very subjective matter, and it depends greatly on the location and height of the clouds. When taking sunset, or sunrise, pictures don't forget to look behind you - often the gaudy colours in the sunset reflect off the clouds behind you giving more subtle colours.

lorim222315 Loc: Twin City Area

Thanks mcveed! I like your landscape definition of thirds. I will continue to practice.

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

I really like the bird in the first one but there may be more stuff in the frame than you really need. Birds or seashells or big waves or rocks can help define a composition. Don't be afraid to sit down (bring a little folding stool if you don't want to get your bottom wet) and shoot from low. Try using a tripod set low or angled downwards and long exposure to blur waves to cotton candy, but only try this if nothing else is moving (moving birds will turn to blurs too). Try different zoom strengths, not just wide angle. Look for a fisherman to silhouette against the sunset.

Beware that you don't use auto ISO on this type of shot, as it'll brighten things up more than you need. I get my best results on manual settings or aperture priority with some adjustments so the camera doesn't over brighten.

You've got some good responses already about basic composition, and I agree with them. There's also a lot you can do to maximize captures and balance the light dark - it can be done using split neutral density filters (ocean sunsets are the best use I'v found for them) and virtual split ND filters in post processing - either or both can make a world of difference. It helps to capture in raw if possible so you have more room to process.

And keep having fun with sunsets, they'll get better the more you work with them.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Unless you're going for an out-and-out silhouette look, you don't want the foreground to be too dark. In this case the sand/surf/bird could do with being a bit brighter to make the details a bit easier to discern. Too dark and it's lost in the gloom.

You ask about colour, and I can tell you what my personal preference for sunsets is. To my mind yellow is just sunshine that you can see at any time of the day, and to my eye the best sunsets/sunrises do not have an excess of yellow. I also don't care for having a lot of yellow/green, or even worse a muddy mustardy colour.

To my mind these are not ideal sunset colours, so I have no reservations about shifting colours like that. For instance if a sunset was impressive but predominantly yellow I would shift the yellow slider well to the left (i.e. towards orange), and possibly shift the orange slider to the left towards red/magenta.

I have done that many times and I would say that the sunset benefits from it. I would also say that most sunsets benefit from having a suggestion of magenta added to them. However, I would assess each sunset on an individual basis, because there are some sunsets that I wouldn't do that to - for instance sunsets where there is a predominance of turquoise or turquoise/pink in the sky.

As I said, these are my personal preferences. Something else that I'm happy to do is to increase the saturation/vibrance/contrast/clarity up to what I would consider a natural and realistic maximum.

Some might say that doing that is changing the sunset from what you saw, but the truth is that nature can - and frequently does - produce some startlingly vivid sunsets/sunrises, so there is quite a bit of leeway before the boosting could be categorised as unrealistic. Apart from that, it's not mediocre sunsets that catch our eye and make us want to capture them. It's vivid sunsets, and in most cases the more vivid the better (up to a point, of course).

And as an added consideration, sunsets on their own may be nice but they don't make for photographs that could be described as great. To lift a sunset shot to that higher level, it needs something more - strong foreground interest, strong foreground/mid-field/far field scenery, a strong subject (e.g. an atmospheric lighthouse) or some sort of unusual or atmospheric setting.

Graham Smith Loc: Cambridgeshire UK

R.G. Your comment resonates very strongly with me. We see so many "another sunset" pictures that they don't make a big impression. A sunset absolutely does need, as you say, a strong and interesting element other than the sunset colours to raise it to another level.

Graham

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Glad you agree. Now all I need to do is practice what I preach :lol: .

R.G. Loc: Scotland

PS - I can't recall you ever posting a sunset/sunrise shot. I'm more than curious to see what you would do with it...........

Graham Smith Loc: Cambridgeshire UK

I just can't bring myself to do a sunset, elbowing all of those phone camera users out of the way is too much hassle :wink:

Perhaps when I get up to Scotland in May/June I will try one looking across the Inner sound towards the Cuillins on Skye.