It's time to do another installment on Composition!
So lets have a meaningful and productive discussion about what makes a good Sunset/Sunrise image. We see a lot of these here every day, and rightfully so, as we have an opportunity for one of each, each and every day.
But first, if you have not already done so, DO go back and read my previous posts on Composition. This discussion will feed off of those and may help explain where I and possibly some of the others in this discussion are coming from! For me the goal is always not just photography but making the best images we can possibly make with the skill-set we poses and improving that skill-set. As with my previous posts, for me, juxtaposition always plays an important element in my images. My personal feeling is that strong color alone is just not enough. My goal is to create a stronger image by incorporating other elements into the composition that help to strengthen a story that colors alone can't tell and assembling those into a more complex composition. That's not to say that a simple strong graphic image can't work just as well. Again, there are no rights or wrongs here.
The hope as always is that we share what we feel are good strong elements and images so that one can takeaway ideas from another's compositional talents that will help them to take better and more impactful images of their own.
Feel free to post an image and explain why you feel it is a strong sunset/sunrise image.
I will post one of each in an adjacent post so that this won't be moved to the gallery.
This is meant to be a learning discussion for all of us that participate.
Blue Hour may also be appropriate in this discussion as well
Thanks, ;-)
SS

Oh goody! I love these threads about composition and sunsets/sunrises are my favorite times to shoot so I've experienced plenty of challenges to share and learn from. This was my all time favorite sunset and it didn't happen in a preferred travel location - when I got a call to check the sky, I had 10 minutes to get to the only open water area anywhere around, left home with no shoes, wrong lens, no tripod (old age has its issues, worse when excited). But when your hometown sky looks like the sunset scene from Life of Pi, you just go.

There are no foreground possibilities or interesting subjects here which I knew beforehand, so I made up foreground out of dead water lilies and background out of the little island, but the real subject was the sky. Yes, it would be better to have the more interesting elements to work with like I have found in Yosemite and Acadia (our reservoir sure ain't Pfeiffer Beach). My question is, how can you make the most out of very little?

The first has a little LR processing to make up for the fact that I didn't bring a grad filter (and a crop for the metal print I had made) but the second is pretty much SOC since the sun was no longer challenging me. I've never known what else to do with them in PP so I just didn't. I shot till the last light vanished, because I figured if I'd waited 65 years for this one, odds are I won't make it to the next!

As much as I love a beautiful sunrise or sunset, i seldom take a photo of the event per se. I do like to take photos of other things or places AT sunrise/sunset, but not just a colorful sky. I usually find most of the images that concentrate solely on the colors in the sky, or (and this is admittedly a very personal bias) which stress a silhouette against a colorful sky, to be very uninteresting compositions. Instead, I prefer compositions that make use of the color of the light at that time to add an element of interest to a composition that I would take at any other time of the day. If the composition would not stand as strong without sunrise/sunset light, then it doesn't become a good composition by simply adding some sunrise/sunset colors, or by using a silhouette.

This images is typical of how I might approach a sunrise/sunset composition. The arrangement of the image's elements is the main emphasis, with the color of the setting sun adding the mood.

In my opinion (sometimes humble, sometimes not) there are two types of sssr pictures. One type is when the sunset or sunrise provides the background for another subject, and the other is when the sssr IS the subject. In the first type there is a wide latitude as to what is acceptable or desirable as far as colour and intensity are concerned. In the second type, where the sssr is the main attraction, there must be something very special about the colour, the subtlety or the intensity that draws the eye and the emotions. Minniev's two pictures are beautiful examples of the latter type. Sharpshooter's two examples are of the former type, where the sssr acts as background; the first fails in that the main subject is an overwhelming silhouette; the second is more successful and could almost be of the second type except for the distraction on the right lower corner. In all cases the real failures are those where the main attraction is an oversaturated orange/red mass, which is all too common.