Sunsets and Sunrises

Contrasting Sunset Light

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Contrasting light of red lit forest with green fields and dark sky

Sometimes the sunset light provides dramatic colors for just a few minutes. The cloudy day blocks the sunshine most of the time. Only during a sunset (or sunrise) – when the sun travels through a thin gap between the clouds and the horizon – the landscape gets lit with a dramatic light.

Some angles produce well lit landscape with dark shady sky. Some produce saturated red skies with dramatic clouds above the dark land. And some do produce a narrow beam of red light, like in this case. The foreground with bright green fields and background with dark clouds provide a nice contrast.

I almost missed the opportunity, which lasted just a few minutes. I grabbed the camera with tripod and managed to do just a two shots before the colors went dull again.

Red Clouds Day

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Colorful dawn with red clouds

Sometimes, you simply get lucky and both light conditions and timing are perfect. I somehow managed to catch both lovely dawn with colorful clouds and pretty nice sunset at the same day, all that completely unplanned.

Both wide angle (24 mm) and detail (200 mm) of the red sunset sky provided pretty nice results. The colors were unusually bright due to the rare weather conditions, resulting in very little humidity and dust in the air. The windy conditions with moving clouds would be great for timelapse. Well, next time.

Detail of bright red sunset sky
Sunset with medieval castle and pink clouds

Autumn Sunrise

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Sometimes you get lucky and the weather cooperates. There were just few minutes of perfect color of the red clouds above the hilly landscape. Such photos are tricky because of the high contrast. I had to use higher ISO and pushed the exposure to the limits on the sky. Otherwise, there will be horrible noise in the dark parts.

You should always push exposure to the upper limits and restore the highlights. Do not try to restore details in the shadows, this produces huge amount of noise. Of course, shooting from tripod and merging multiple exposures is always better approach.