Sunsets

Well, the sun is kind of bright...

You could wait until the suns just sunk below the horizon, or partly veiled by a cloud.

You could exclude the sun from the photograph by composing differently

You could make the brightest areas darker by giving less exposure but then everything else will be darker too and you'll end up with a silhouette.

If you're using digital and have a tripod you could shoot two exposures of the same scene, one for the foreground and one with less exposure for the sky and blend them.

You could use a graduated neutral density filter to hold back the light to the top of the picture by a stop or two (or three) relative to the foreground.

Each of these techniques can work in different circumstances- only you can decide what's the most appropriate method for a particular photograph. There isn't one "right answer".

What David said, he pretty much covered them all. I use GND's. A two or three stop overexposed 1/2 - 1/3. You can then bring out foreground detail in PS and add some color to the sky. Play around with the various methods and see waht works for you. I suspect that you will decide aon some combo. I've seen some very good result with alyering multiple exposures in PS.

Goout and take some shots using the different methods and play with them in PS.

Hi Janis,

Here is something I did with your photo in PS CS2. Using the Lasso tool, I made a loose

Selection around the white-spot. Then I made a layer from this selection and using the

Sample tool, I sampled the light yellow color around the sun. This became my

Foreground color. Using a soft-edged Brush at roughly 60 percent opacity, I painted over

the sun. After painting you can vary the opacity of this layer, as well. See attachment for

my alteration. You can try different size selections, different color samples and vary the

opacities to your satisfaction. Good luck.

Roger

" those bright spots .. "

Why do you use the plural "spots"? There is only one bright area where the sun actually is. Nice lens: no flare that I can see!

Do you want to take the sun out of your sunset picture? Your pic looks like I see sunsets, so what is there to do, what is your intention with the pic?

One cannot take sunset photos without the sun; or they would be oxymorons in themselves.

Incidentally the doctored picture above looks very unreal, with a sun way toooo big for planet Earth.

Thanks David, Jim, Roger, Frank, and Robert!

I plan to return to this post and experiment with each of your tips. In answer to some of the questions brought up--yes I do want the sun in there so I will need to invest in a GND or get better with layering images in PS or both. I am trying to capture that feeling I get when I watch the setting sun paint the sky with such brilliant colors. (Especially today with the vog from Kilauea coming over from the big island too bad I couldn't get out of traffic in time to take a few scores of shots.)

I've been seeing everyone else's gorgeous photos of sunsets. I'm noticing that a lot of the images I admire are either shot with film/slide or with digital and a whole lot of skill in PS. So in my quest to capture my own gorgeous sunset image, I may just dust off my old film SLR and find some velvia just to try...

Thank you all for the great tips!