Week 24The sunset was really pretty this evening, and actually the sunrise was as well. This shot was taken from our balcony and I've tried it many times before and have always struggled to get the shot. I have Cokin graduated filters but to be honest I don't really like using them.
Everybody likes sunsets - I just wish they were easier to photograph. I actually do better either just after sunset like this shot in Brisbane towards Story Bridge off Kangaroo Point, or this blog posting about Modern Architecture. I really like late afternoon directional light too, but usually I'm shooting away from the sun or at least at an angle like here (also taken in Brisbane with Kangaroo Point in view).
The camera is my D3 mounted on a tripod in aperture priority at f/5.6. The camera is set to give a minimum shutter speed of 1/30 second and determined on it's own that ISO should be 250. I bracketed this shot but I used the one with no offset. The lens is a AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm 1:2.8G ED zoomed to 38mm.
I pulled this up as a raw file and fooled with it a while - in the end I just took the jpg straight from the camera and posted it with a bit of straightening and cropping (you shouldn't have to straighten if you use a tripod :-). The camera was set in my custom "vivid" mode which adds some saturation to the jpg files. The main decision for me here was whether I wanted more detail in the shadow area - I decided not to and it is almost a silhouette. To get more detail I would have used the overexposed shot in a layer or HDR. I don't think the graduated filter would give me what I was looking for.
Idea based on Last Light, pages 62-64 in the book 50 Photo Projects by Lee Frost.
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