How To Shoot That Perfect Sunset: Every photographer has that need to shoot that perfect sunset. But first you need to understand a when is the correct time for you to shoot it! A sunset is such a great sight that’s its tempting just to wait until passers by are out of the frame, then just plonk the sun in the centre of the shot and then just hit the shutter. You’ll find that if you do that you’ll end up with a shot which any Tom Dick or Harry can take, and you’ll find it’s pretty dull when you look back in a few years time.
What great photographers do is capture the atmosphere of the great scene. When you’re taking this photo try to capture what’s around you, as you can see in my photo I’ve captured the beautiful mountains in the back ground, you also need to try to frame the scene so it captures some of that.
What you’re looking for when your taking your sunset photo is the silhouette in the foreground. This is because the sun is such a dominant light source for every photo. All the new cameras now a days have a built in options which helps you get the exposure perfect, which gives you that dark moody foreground.
Another great tip here is try and avoid shooting the sun altogether, and make sure it’s out of the frame or obscured by an object or person. This way you’ll give your shoot less extreme lighting for your camera to cope with, this effect gives you more of an even transition between the foreground and background.
Something else to think about when your taking a portrait shot is, there face or faces will come out as a silhouette, or even with very dark faces. You could try switching the flash on just to try and lift the foreground in your photo. Another great tip here is trying and think about white balancing.
You can set this manually and make sure you set your balance to daylight this way it gives you that warm tone of the sun. Most people who this set to automatic and the default setting for this is a little on the cool side, this compensate for to much red and yellow in your photo, but you need to understand that this type of photo has to have reds and yellows because it’s exactly what your after.
