Posts in Category: sunset
11/10/2009
Gulls in Sun Under Clouds
Sometimes the sun, as it sets, finds the crack between the cloud cover and the horizon (should there be one) and has one last shine. There is nothing that matches that particular light. This late afternoon in question I was shooting winter gulls on a little beach in Kennebunk when it happened, and the way the gulls lined the tide line standing on their own reflections in the wet sand, and the curve of the land out to see, and the lone house…and that subtle blush of sunset along the horizon.
Sony DSC H50 40mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
Recovery for the sky in Lightroom (but not much), added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint slightly right. Sharpen Landscape preset.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
11/9/2009
Rose Hips at Sunset
I previsualized this shot, walking back to the car from my late day, cloud’s-closing-in visit to the beach…but getting it right was not so easy. There were lots of rose hips, just at their best, and lots of beach, but finding the right combination proved more difficult. And then exposing the thing: that was a challenge.
Still, with a little help in Lightroom, it just about works.
Sony DSC H50 at just under 40mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.
I took two exposures, one metered more for the sky and one more for the rose hips. When I got home, I actually chose the lighter of the two to work with as the hips were just too dark in the sky shot.
Recovery for the sky, Fill Light for the hips. Blackpoint slightly right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen Landscape preset. I pulled a Graduated Filter effect down diagonally from the top left corner, ending just at the hips. I reduced Exposure and Brightness, and increased Contrast under the filter. Finally, I increased overall Exposure slightly and cropped from the top to eliminate some distracting elements on the right and improve overall composition.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
11/8/2009
Drawing Water over Parson's Marsh
Happy Sunday!
For full effect you should view this image larger than it is here. Click it and it will open in a new window. There are size controls at the top.
By the time I got out yesterday afternoon, we were rapidly loosing the light. Clouds were coming and we had an early sunset as they built in from the west. I always love the sun drawing water effect, and have caught it several times this fall. Must be something in the air.
Drawing water shots are, however, among the most difficult to expose. It is really a very delicate effect: obvious to the naked eye…but the eye has such a huge range of light sensitivity compared to any capture medium, and certainly compared to a digital sensor. It is just not possible to capture the scene the way it really looks.
Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto, tipped up to meter the sky.
So you expose, as I did here, for the sun-rays, and everything else goes unnaturally dark. You can recover some of the natural look in post-processing with curves and levels and selective exposure compensation, but you never get quite there. Personally, I generally decide on the dramatic look…dark and intense…and then second think and go back for a more natural treatment, as I did here.
In Lightroom, I used two Graduated Filter effects, one from the bottom to lighten the foreground, and one from the top to darken the clouds and sky. I also applied a good deal of Fill Light to bring out some color in the marsh grasses in the mid-ground. Blackpoint just a touch right for intensity. Added Clarity and Vibrance for the drawing water effect. Sharpen Landscape preset.
From Around Home: Kennebunk ME.
8/20/2009
Walls along the Lane, Above Kendal
From the same walk as the shot from yesterday, just a few yards up the lane. Amazing stone walls in this part of England. The rolling hills, the sheep, the colors, and the sky.
Minolta A1, at 28mm equivalent. F7.1 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Required a graduated filter effect from the top to bring out detail in the sky, and a blackpoint adjustment to intensify the colors, as well as the bulk processing listed yesterday.
8/19/2009
Hills above Kendal, between the Lakes and the Dales
In honor of being in England (where I will not have access to this blog), I will post some images from a trip my wife and took to the Lake Country and Yorkshire Dales in 2005. They were taken with the Minolta A1, perhaps the worst digital camera I have ever used…it had a great lens: 28 to 140mm equivalent as I remember, but the sensor had very limited dynamic range compared to cameras I have owned since. I eventually bought a little 6mp Sony pocket camera and, when I saw the results it produce, stopped carrying the A1 altogether. Eventually there was a recall on the model when the sensors failed. By then my daughter was using the camera, and the sensor failed right after the Sony Minolta deal when service was in limbo. I never did get it fixed.
This is image, on the other hand, is one of my favorites from the camera and the trip. Our first night at a farm house B&B above Kendal at the edge of the Lake District, between the lakes and the dales, we took a walk in the B&B.
Minolta A1, at 70mm equivalent. F7.1 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
In Lightroom I preprocessed all the images in this set (>200) as a batch, applying the Punch preset (added Clarity and Vibrance), and the Landscape sharpen preset. I then opened individual images for additional processing. On this one I applied some Recovery for the sky, a bit of Fill Light, and slid the blackpoint to the right to intensify all the colors.
From England 2005.
8/12/2009
Logged on to the Horizon
Late light. Sand. Driftwood. Beach grass. Bit of clouds over the horizon.
Sony DSC H50 at about 40mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Recovery and cropping in Lightroom. Added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen preset.
4/23/2009
Hibiscus (backlight)
I looked at this huge Hibiscus bush by my hotel in St. Augustine FL yesterday at least 25 times. This shot is late in the day, with the low sun backlighting the blooms. Taken in telephoto macro mode from about 12 feet away.
Sony DSC H50 at just over 400mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Minimal processing in Lr. Just my usual Clarity and Vibrance, with Landscape sharpen preset. I moved the black point to the right a few degrees.
From St. Augustine FL.
3/16/2009
On Deck
You can always see larger versions of the image by clicking anywhere in it to go to the Smugmug page.
On the waterfront in downtown San Diego at sunset. Planes on the deck of the Midway in the foreground, the SD skyline in the back. The light is, of course, the subject here as much as the buildings, but it is also about the shapes and the way they fill the frame. This is where the long zoom range of the Super-zoom cameras shows its real worth. From where I stood at the end of the Fish Market point, near the bow of the Midway, I had an all but infinite range of perspectives to choose for the shot, just by pressing the zoom button.
This shot (Sony DSC H50) was taken at just about 100mm equivalent, to catch some of the color of the planes on deck and put the buildings up fairly large against the sky. F4.0 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I applied a little Recovery for the sky, some Vibrance and Clarity in the Presence panel, and the Landscape sharpen preset. I also added some Fill Light to show detail in the shadows under the deck.
I considered cropping it tighter, removing the all but the top of what appears to be a parking garage and the hull of the boat below the deck, but, I decided that when viewed large, the delicate tracings of the tree against the building in the lower left are worth keeping.
From San Diego 2009.
3/14/2009
Into the Sun (click image for other size views)
Shooting directly into the sun near sunset often produces interesting effects. In this case the golden look over the stark shapes at the edge of the Marina in Mission Bay California. It looks as though I toned the image, but I did not. It is simply an effect of the lighting and the tight cropping of the fairly long zoom setting.
What caught my eye was the repeating shapes of the catwalks leading down to the docks and the way the sun was catching them.
Sony DSC H50 at about 250mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/2000 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
From San Diego 2009
3/8/2009
Mission Bay Marina, San Diego CA (click image for Smugmug views)
We will get back to Scotland, but I thought I would post some fresh work for the next few days while I process images from San Diego (where I am a the moment).
The conference is at the Mission Bay Marina Village Center, just behind the seawall and beyond the flood control channel for the San Diego River. This shot was taken through the wall of windows which is directly behind my booth, sort of between customers.
From past experience it is a pretty typical San Diego sunset. I used my tip the camera up and let the meter read the sky, lock exposure, and reframe trick to bias the exposure for the sunset at the expense of the foreground.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F4.0 @ 1/80th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto, manually biased for the sky.
In Lightroom I used some Recovery for the sky (even with the bias it was still too light). My usual Presence settings: Added Clarity and Vibrance, and Landscape sharpen preset. I also cropped off some at the bottom to eliminate some distracting foreground detail.
The sky was still too light and the foreground too dark, so I applied Lightroom’s graduated filter effect. This is my first experiment with it, and it is indeed a powerful tool. I drew the filter over the image from the top and adjusted the level of the effect to get the sky to where I wanted it. That still left the foreground too dark, so I added Fill Light in the Exposure panel. The result is an image that is a very close approximation of what I actually saw out the window. I will be using the graduated filter effect a lot more now that I have some experience with it.
By the way, exposure is only one of the parameters you can change with the graduated filter effect. You can also change the brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, or sharpness. Powerful tool indeed.
The image is from the new San Diego 2009 gallery.