Project 16: dusk and Project 18: sunrise and sunset

For this project I chose a clear July evening (I had to wait several weeks for the weather to change for the better in this awful summer!) and headed out into the Lincolnshire Wolds.  In retrospect the location was not the most inspiring and I shall look to repeat the exercise at a more interesting spot in the near future.  It did allow me, however, to answer the technical aspects of the project.  I began to shoot with the sun still above the horizon and continued after it had gone down into the twilight.  At each time I shot three images: one at 17mm, one at 50 and one at 85mm.  The results are shown below.

Here there is noticeable flare caused by shooting directly into the sun.  In the wide angle shot an orange layer shows immediately above the horizon and this grades gradually into blue becomeing more intense towards the top.  In the telephoto shots the gradation is less maked.

 As the sun sinks the gradation of colours becomes more marked with an intense blue towards the top of the wide angle image.  Again the effect is less marked with the telephoto shots.

Now the sun has gone the band of orange becomes narrower and the blue wider and more intense.  The clouds now begin to take on a pink hue.

 The clouds become increasingly orange/pink.

 I changed the point of view for these later shots which was fine for the wide angle shots but the slow shutter speeds at the tele end of the zoom has caused blurring in the grasses.  I feel this was not successful.

Here the sky is reflected in the shiny bonnet of the car.

I took this photo a few days ago close to home.  The sun has sunk below the horizon and the clouds and sky are mirrored in the waters of the saltmarsh lagoon.  I used an ND filter to give a shutter speed of 30 seconds which smoothed out the few ripples on the water surface in order to produce the best reflection.

I took these next two images above the nearby Wolds village of Worlaby last January.  The wide angle shot nicely shows the gradation from orange to pink to blue.

 In this telephoto shot the zoom has caught just the pink/orange but I like the contrast with the cool bluer colour of the ground.

 These next two shots are ones from 2010 of Cleethorpes pier at sunrise.  Every sunset/sunrise seems top produce its own clours.

Again two shots from 2010 of Bamburgh castle taken from Seahouses Harbour at sunset.  The first is a wide angle view and for the second I have zoomed in to feature the castle and the wonderful orange colours.