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16 Spectacular Sunset Photographs (And How To Take Them)

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Posted by Patrick on Sep 7, 2008 in feature

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Sunsets (thumbnail courtesy SqueakyMarmot ). It’s hard to imagine a more spectacular time of day to take photographs than when the sun starts to set. With their incredibly rich colors, and dramatic abstraction of the everyday, sunsets are naturally appealing to most folks even if for the simple reason of we simply don’t see the world this way for the majority of the day (if at all). It’s no surprise then, that most photographers will at some point try their hand at capturing a sunset. Unfortunately, it often is not as easy as you’d imagined. The huge dynamic range of sunsets often will wreck havoc with your camera’s metering, leaving you with blown highlights, or shadows with no detail. Luckily, there are some things you can do with your digital SLR camera (and possibly point and shoot compact) to help you take home some spectacular sunset photographs of your own. We’ll tell you how, after the jump…

Plan. Sounds simple, but it really helps to know when and where the sun is going to be setting. Scouting a location is one thing, but knowing where the sun will set on location is another thing all together.
Prepare: You’re gonna want to bring a tripod for stability and convenience and a formatted memory card. The effects of a sunset on your picture taking will change during the course of the sunset, so your going to be taking a surprising amount of photos during the course of it.
Forget AUTO: For best results set your camera to “program”, “aperture”, or “manual” mode. Personally I like to set the camera to aperture priority mode, meter my compostition (press half-way down on the shutter) read the camera settings taking notice of the shutter speed, then set the camera to manual mode, entering the noted settings in accordingly.
Use Exposure Compensation/Highlights Preview: Most recent DSLRs have a function to allow you to see blown highlights on the LCD after you’ve taken a picture. What it does is allow the photographer to see the highlights with no detail (pure white) by blinking on and off those sections of the image on your LCD. After metering your scene, composing and capturing your photo, check your highlighted view on your LCD for these “Blinkies” and adjust your exposure compensation until your capture no longer has the “blinkies”. Alternatively, you can use the “Histogram” view instead, but under light challenged conditions, I find the “Highlight” view a little easier.
Metering is tricky: As I said before, the dynamic range of sunsets can be tricky, and generally, simply metering the center of the scene won’t provide the ideal results. Instead a trick I learned by reading Scott Kelby’s The Digital Photography Book Vol. 2 ( mini review: buy it right now!) is to meter right above the setting sun. Simply press halfway down on the shutter, then recompose your photo, and press all the way down on the shutter to take the photo. It usually works great and at the very least provides a very close starting point for exposure settings. Again check your LCD, and adjust exposure compensation if needed.
Don’t pack up early: Don’t stop taking photos just because the sun is gone. The afterglow of the suns light even after it is below the horizon can create some amazing lighting conditions. You brought an empty memory card so use it.
Turn around: Hey! The magic might just be happening behind you.
Composition/Subject Matter: It goes with out saying that the sun probably doesn’t need to be centered in your photograph. Composing your photo with the sun to one side or the other usually works best, and don’t forget that sunsets have the potential to silhouette many foreground elements (including people) which can create some abstract interest to your photos. Also shooting wider allows you to get more of the amazing atmosphere in your photo, as opposed to filling your photo with just a giant yellow orb. Of course all rules were meant to be broken, and you brought an empty memory card, so break a few…

And now for some inspiration…

Photo: SqueakyMarmot

Photo: flattop341

Photo: Oaki

Photo: Wolfgang Staudt

Photo: Daylight.

Photo: kcdsTM’s

Photo: extranoise

Photo: fly again

Photo: Fr Antunes

Photo: muha…

Photo: Chris Gin

Photo: Photofusion

Photo: notsogoodphotography

Photo: Ortiz Q.

Photo: James Gordon

Photo: simonswansea66

If you have any additional tips or links to your own sunset photos, by all means, leave them in the comments. And if you liked this post, hey, why not Digg it?

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