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Sunset Photography Tips

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The best time of day for photographers is surely around sunset (and sunrise if you’re an early riser). Sunsets with their brilliant colour are an absolute gift for those who love to capture nature at its most spectacular. Never the same twice, the colours and shapes you get for those fleeting minutes can lead to some of your most treasured photos.

Unfortunately sunset photography can be quite a challenge and many people end up rather disappointed with their results. To make the most of shooting sunsets, you have to employ a few tricks.

• Camera technology works hard to produce photos that are perfectly exposed in every situation. Unfortunately the camera seldom gets it right with sunsets – in fact, on auto settings it often produces lacklustre effects. For the best colour, you have to take control of your camera settings and underexpose. Set you camera’s exposure compensation to -1 stop. Or, for best results, try several settings and choose the best. If your camera doesn’t have exposure-compensation controls, try setting the flash control to ‘flash always’. The flash won’t have any effect unless there’s part of the landscape in near vicinity, but this setting will cause the camera to underexpose the scene, which is what you want.

• Invest in a neutral density filter and place it over the lens to reduce the light coming through. Experiment with AE-compensation when using a filter.

• It’s very important to control White Balance when shooting sunsets. Auto mode often reduces the red levels in your shots, so try daylight for warmer tones. You could also experiment with tungsten-settings for something different.

• Include some silhouetted foreground interest for an extra wow-factor in the composition of your shot, for example buildings, trees, or hills.

• Turn your back on the sunset and capture the landscape bathed in the rich warm light that’s only there for moments before the sun completely disappears behind the horizon.

• As a project, take shots of the same scene at sunset at different times of the year. As the weather changes, the results will change too.

• Use a tripod. Exposures lengthen as the sun sets and without camera support, you could find you prize shots compromised by blur.

• Use the long end of your zoom (telephoto) to make the sun appear bigger in the frame.

If you found inspiration on our how to photograph sunsets page, feel free to browse the following pages too:

Related Pages

* Low Light Photography

* Night Photography Techniques

* Landscape Photography Tips

* Mountain Photography Tips

* Seascape Photography Tips

Hope you enjoyed our sunset tips!

(From Sunset Photography back to Painting with Light) (From Sunset Photography back to Basic Photography Tips Home Page)

Read, reflect and be inspired. If you find something of value on our sunset photography page, enjoy its gifts and please pass it on to your friends.