In yesterday’s blog, I gave a few suggestions for how to increase your chances of taking a good picture of the sun as it sinks. Last night, I tried to put those suggestions into action. I concentrated on getting a composition with the sun on one side of the picture and something on the other side to balance it, and with the sun a reasonable size and neither too bright nor too dark, and close to the horizon.
As on previous occasions, I was somewhat stymied by low-lying cloud as the sun descended towards the horizon, but I gave it my best try in the circumstances. I took a few OK pictures, but no really good ones. The best 3 are below, with comments beneath each picture. The pictures haven‘t been post-processed in any way, and they all get bigger if you click on them.
This first picture has good colour and the birds balance the composition nicely, but the clouds are obscuring the shape of the sun.
This picture has the same cloud problem as the first picture and is balanced by the breakwater and post. The reflections in the sand make this more interesting. It is slightly too dark.
The cloud problem again, but good colour. I like the fact that on this one, the image is symmetrical top to bottom, but non-symmetrical left to right. There is too little of interest on the left side though, and ultimately that lets it down, even though the colours are nice.
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There is a Pink Floyd song called "Obscured by Clouds" that they used to open their concerts with. You can hear it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rxy3EX5a4k
Cheers, Tom.
http://lois.co.uk
13/05/08 @ 10:22