Last night, the sun was dipping towards the sea in the most stunning manner and it looked like an ideal time to get some good sunset pictures.  So, out on a walk on the beach with Helen, and our 2 dogs, I took 400 pictures: not a single one of them was good. No, not even one. So, the rest of this blog is a list of 10 problems of taking good pictures of the sun as it sets. It’s not an exhaustive list by any means.

1. Composition. It’s boring if the sun is splat! In the middle of the picture with nothing else visible. It’s better to one side, with other things of interest on the other side: trees, rocks, buildings, people, anything. Even good colours are sufficient.

2. Horizon. This should be flat. The sea is a particularly harsh mistress for this as if you have the frame even slightly canted, it stands out like a drunk in a midnight choir.

3. Too bright. The sun is brighter the higher it is. You have to wait until it’s sufficiently low or use some sort of filter to compensate, otherwise it will be too bright. If you over-filter, all you’ll see is the sun and nothing else and that’s a further problem.

4. Too dark. If you wait until the sun is dipping below the horizon, there will be much less light and the chance of a dark picture increases. It will also end up too dark if you over-compensate with the light controls on your camera.

5. Sun too high. You need to be patient. Taking pictures before the sun is close to the horizon can result in having the sun at the top of the picture, a big boring space and then something at the bottom of the picture. This isn’t good. You can get away with this is you managed point 1. Well.

6. Low-lying cloud. This problem occurs everywhere, but more often at the seaside. As the sun dips, the air cools and moisture is more likely to form close to the ground (or water). This creates mist, or even cloud. It feels like a conspiracy. Just as the sun dips towards the horizon it goes behind a dirty great cloud to ruin your shot. This has happened here every day for the last few weeks when the weather has been mostly good. Last night was no exception.

7. Sun too big. If you zoom to get a large sun, it doesn’t look good. It dominates the picture too much, probably looks too bright, and is ultimately not interesting to look at.

8. Sun too small. The sun is supposed to be the main thing in your picture so if it’s just a dot, it’s no good.

9. Too pale. This is generally the result of poor settings on your digital camera. Make it a little darker and the colour should come back, but don’t overdo it.

10. Lens flare. This is a problem with all cameras but more-so with digitals. The unwanted images can sometimes look good but tend not to. It’s best avoided by not shooting directly at the sun, and by not having the sun just out of shot.

Really, it’s a wonder any decent sunset pictures get taken at all! Helen and I reckon there is a higher occurrence of stunning sunsets in Winter.

The picture above is one of my best ones yet, and I took it in early March. Click on it to make it bigger. I think it’s compositionally flawed because the top left side of the picture is fairly uninteresting but I like the colours and I like the size and position of the sun in the picture.

Cheers, Tom.