Project 16 and 18: Dusk/Sunrise and Sunset. A second and third attempt.

As I was dissatisfied with the first images that I used for this project, whilst I was staying in Musselburgh I decided to repeat the exercise with some more interesting backgrounds.

This first set is of the Forth Road Bridge taken from the tiny harbour at South Queensferry. Again as in the first set of images the gradation from deep orange to blue is more evident in the first wide angle shot from each pair. The blue disappears with the telephoto effect. In these shots there is some cloud on the horizon and this diffuses the full glare of the sun while it is still above the horizon.

 

The following set were taken from the small harbour of Fisherharrow, Musselburgh. Here the sky is more clear and so while the sun is still above the horizon it causes flare, especially with the wide angle shots. Interestingly though when I placed the rigging of the yachts across the sun it produced a pleasing sun star, especially with the wide angle shots.

What have I learned:

When photographing sunsets there are many variations that give pleasing results. Longer exposure times produce more detail in the shadows but then the sky can become more blown out and lose the rich colours. In neither iof these sets of images have I used an ND grad as the masts of the yachts and the bridge structure would have created complications. I could have used exposure fusion, either in photomatix or photoshop but I decided to use the images as they were for this project. Partly for the purposes of the exercise but also because I like the silhouette effect from sunset images and am not sure that a lot of detail in the shadows would look realistic. I do like the effect of using some flash (covered in project 17) though. I noticed that when the sky is clear as in the second set the wide angle images tended to be more underexposed so may some exposure compensation would be useful with clear skies and wide angle.

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.