Seeking Sunset on Sunday

[squirmelia]

In Richmond, wintrmute and I walk past boats full of flowers and lanes of nightingales.

Parakeets fly out of gnarled trees that look orange in the fading light, and on King Henry VIII's Mound, people peer into the mist, hoping to see St Paul's Cathedral through a telescope. I climb into a partially hollow tree, surrounding myself with rotting wood. There are little holes that I notice, probably caused by a xylophagous creature, before extricating myself and jumping back outside to the real world.

It is then that the sunset blooms from the sky, in pink, blue, orange and yellow, and it is then that the trees appear as silhouettes, but it is later that we eat deep fried artichokes.

Comments

[albatros.livejournal.com]

Ahhh yes, silhouettes of trees against coloured sunsets - very good if you can pull it off, which you have just nicely. You seem to have a good knack with that (and other pics in the past, I notice you seem to use all the good tricks!)

[pgd.livejournal.com]

Agreed, some beautiful pics there. Any tips for taking this type of shot?

[albatros.livejournal.com]

Underexpose! Cameras usually overexpose and 'blow out' colours, e.g. orange turns to yellow and colours desaturate. Digital cameras are very unforgiving of overexposure. If you have a way of looking at the light levels on the actual recorded image (e.g. a histogram), ensure that there is no light at the very highest light levels.

If you're lucky enough to have a camera that has RAW recording, and the software to read them, then go for this option if you think you might need to 'stretch out' any areas or rescue shadows (which you generally don't for silhouettes, but you might want to pull out detail in clouds).

Anyhoo, I don't want to dominate this thread :o) Anyone else?

[albatros.livejournal.com]

Oh, and smaller aperture (F10) and a tripod.

[pgd.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Sounds fairly straightforward, then (apart from the image processing, which I think I'm quite a way from getting into just yet!) ... I've tried taking sunset shots before and found underexposure to be the way forward. Is the point of the small aperture just to limit the light a bit more? I can't imagine depth-of-field mattering if you're shooting the sky...

[albatros.livejournal.com]

DoF: helps keep the branches of the trees sharp, if you're fairly close to them. With a wider aperture, light tends to 'leak around' the detail of the branches, and you end up losing some of the finer twigs, even if they're only slightly off the focal range.

[darklily.livejournal.com]

Thank you ever so much for the card, frog, and chocolate! The latter was very tasty, and the former two shall be treasured forever. :)

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Sorry it took so long to send! I suppose at least it got there before 2010. :)