Thematic Thursdays

Hi There,

On Thursdays I'm going to be focusing on amateur photography, and essentially walking you through the process behind some of my favorite shots. This week's theme is centered around capturing the sunset.

*Unavoidable disclaimer: I am a novice photographer and I make lots of mistakes! A lot of my favorite shots were happy accidents, but luckily those are best to learn from. 

I had set out in the early afternoon on a little photography field trip up highway 101 (I was living in Santa Barbara, CA at the time). I can't say it was my intention that day to get a good sunset shot, but it ended up being one of the best that I took that day. Which brings me to my first point:

1) It's great to have a plan, but don't let it stop you from exploring something that catches your eye 

Having that eye/creative vision is one of the most inspiring things when you're behind the camera - don't stifle it! My intention was to spend the afternoon taking some photos out in the country. Here are some of the results:

As you've no doubt noticed (and I've already mentioned), these are not pictures of a sunset. It just happened to be that the sun was going down as I was on my drive home, so I decided to pull the car over and try to get some shots. I took a lot of duds, which leads into my next point:

2) Take a lot of shots

I'm talking about a lot. A LOT. Make sure you have a large memory card in order to facilitate. It's pretty rare that you'll get the perfect framing, lighting, focus, etc the first time. You have to be willing to stick it out, change your grip, move a little to the left (to the left, to the left)... whatever it takes to get the image where you want it. A lot of times, you won't even know where you want it until you stumble upon it. 

However, this can get a bit tricky if you are trying to capture something as fleeting as a sunset. I was able to get around that by starting early. I stopped on the side of the road (safety first!) in several different spots while the sun was still descending before I found my sweet spot. Check out these duds:

so hazy

nope

just...what?

apparently not amused

So, these obviously weren't the spots I wanted to hang around for the actual sunset.

3) If you have an inspiration, be persistent!

At this point I knew I needed to capture the upcoming sunset, but I wasn't in the right place. I had recently discovered a view that I had been inspired by, luckily I was only a few minutes away. Over I went, and got there just in time. My first few shots were pretty good, but not quite perfect.

I was pretty happy with the silhouette and background coloring, but it was still missing something, so I re-framed and ended up with this:

I was beyond lucky (not to mention happy) to catch the sun right before it sunk below the horizon. It was just perfect timing!

If you're interested in seeing some more of my photos, you can head over to my 500px page!

*All of the shots in this post were taken with a Nikon D5100. You can find one here. All images were shot in RAW mode, and then edited in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Thanks for stopping by!