{"id":9316,"date":"2011-06-14T22:07:10","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T03:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/?p=9316"},"modified":"2011-06-14T22:07:10","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T03:07:10","slug":"photographing-sunsets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2011\/06\/14\/photographing-sunsets\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographing sunsets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wassenberg Camera Club will meet Thursday, June 9, at 7 p.m.\u00a0at the Wassenberg Art Center at 643 S. Washington Street in Van Wert..\u00a0“Sunsets” will be the competition theme in prints and slides that evening.<\/p>\n

Now that the farmers are in the fields, the dust they make, or particles from a forest fire, or a volcanic eruption can\u00a0create some spectacular sunsets.\u00a0 Check the forecast and watch the sky for developing clouds that might provide surfaces for the sun to color or to\u00a0hide the sun to create sun rays. Sometimes when you are traveling west you will see a sunset begin to develop.\u00a0 If possible, find a place along the road that has an interesting tree, rock formation,\u00a0building or body of water that you can place in the foreground to make the picture more interesting.\u00a0 At home, have such a place already in mind that will not only provide the foreground interest, but also enables you to follow the path of the sun below the horizon.<\/p>\n

Often the sky is the most colorful just before or just after the sun drops below the horizon.\u00a0 For below the horizon shots, slightly under expose the scene.\u00a0 It will make the colors more vivid and the foreground, which should only be a third of the picture or less, more in silhouette.<\/p>\n

Use your lowest ISO setting to reduce noise in the dark areas.\u00a0 This may mean you’ll need to put your camera on a tripod to make a longer, sharper exposure.<\/p>\n

Using a body of water, even a large mud puddle for a sky reflector can add much to the picture.\u00a0 The lower to the water you can get, the more the reflection will be in the picture.\u00a0 Note that before sunrise and after sunset will\u00a0produce the\u00a0calmest surfaces for reflections.\u00a0 There will be wind currents present to some degree as long as the sun is above the horizon to ruffle the surface.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

Although including the sun in the composition may provide just the touch you want, there are some technical hazards to be aware of that are not present when the sun is below the horizon or behind a cloud, trees, or whatever.<\/p>\n

One is the bright spot in the sky where the sun is.\u00a0 It is easy to overexpose this area while trying to get the rest of the sky right.\u00a0 Under exposing the area may solve\u00a0the brightness problem, but the rest of the sky may be too dark.<\/p>\n

Another problem is the danger to your eyes from looking at the sun for extended periods, or looking through the viewfinder where the sun’s rays have been concentrated by the camera’s lens.\u00a0 Forget the viewfinder and use the view screen.\u00a0 Should you be using a film camera with a cloth shutter, it is possible to burn holes through the shutter — at least it happened to me while trying to directly shoot a solar eclipse.<\/p>\n

If the scene is quite impressive, you may want to consider taking a series of horizontal pictures (tripod preferred) and stitch them together for a panoramic view.\u00a0 An aid for a so-so scene due to lack of color is a warming filter.\u00a0 Often the view through\u00a0such a filter provides just enough of a color boost to create a very respectable image.<\/p>\n

There should be a huge number of images brought to the competition and visitors are invited to feast their eyes on a great show.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sunset photograph by Rex Dolby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wassenberg Camera Club will meet Thursday, June 9, at 7 p.m.\u00a0at the Wassenberg Art Center at 643 S. Washington Street in Van Wert..\u00a0“Sunsets” will be the competition theme in prints and slides that evening. Now that the farmers are in the fields, the dust they make, or particles from a forest fire, or a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cameraclub"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 20:25:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}