6 Tips for Taking Great Sunset Photos

Hi everyone

Just thought I might share my experience on taking sunset pictures with
this group. Hope it's useful - try these six tricks to capture powerful
photos imbued with the beauty and positive feelings of sunsets.

1. Always get a full view
Position yourself on a beach or a highpoint to allow an unrestricted
view of the sun for maximum impact. An alternative is to capture the
sun falling between trees, next to an attractive monument or reflecting
off the water. Make sure your photo isn't too busy with other objects
that distract attention.

2. Just keep shooting
More attempts will increase your chances of getting the right results.
As the sun gets lower, it tends to get redder as well, so your results
should improve in the final moments of a sunset.

3. Be on the lookout for clouds
Sunsets on cloudy evenings are more colorful and interesting than
sunsets on clear evenings. While you may not actually capture the sun
itself in these photos, capturing an amazing variety of colors and rich
cloudy textures will make up for it.

4. Shoot off-center
Bring more life to your sunset photos by positioning the horizon away
from the center of your photo. Instead, keep it near the bottom of the
shot to dramatically highlight the sky. In combination with this,
leaving some foreground in the shot, such as a person or a tree, will
give greater interest and give you a great opportunity to work on
silhouette photographs.

5. Try to use multiple exposure settings
Your camera's light meter will often under-expose sunsets because there
is still quite a bit of light, so bracketing (taking several shots at
different exposures) may be needed to find the perfect exposure. A
little under-exposure can help to make the colors of a sunset richer.
If you want to include the details of a person in the foreground, try
using fill flash and night mode. This will bring out their details
while still allowing enough exposure to get rich colors - remember to
use a tripod in this case to avoid camera shake.

6. Zoom In
It is effective to use a long focal length for sunsets, because the sun
will appear much larger and more impressive in the sky. Either choose
the longest optical zoom lens setting on your camera or use a longer
telephoto lens on your SLR.
Gary Hendricks
http://www.basic-digital-photography.com