Tree & Sea—Sunset Perspective

A simple telephoto shot, part of a long sequence documenting sunset on May 2^nd, 2022. Taken from the carpark on Range Road, above the Adelaide plain, the alignment of the sun with the trees and nearby power pylons created some interesting silhouettes. One would not think so many frames of essentially the dame material would create so many aesthetically different choices, but they do! I featured a frame from this shoot once before, quite a way back. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Sunset in Telephoto

Sunsets are organic images, building, changing and g-fading in response to natural factors. The configuration of the clouds, the angle of the sunlight falling on them—all conspire to make each sunset different from every other. I shot this one on May 23^rd, 2023, almost at the end of a lengthy series, as the finale to a long day's expedition that took us all overt the near north—Lenswood, the Barossa, the Whispering Wall, Gleeson Wetland and so forth. With the sunset building, we pulled over and spent a while shooting the flaming sky from beside the highway, as photographers sometimes do. No particular photographic effects, though this is a high telephoto shot, closing in on the richest point in the sky. Unzoomed frames are mainly blue-toned, with the reds confined to a band low toward the horizon. Minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Evening at Altitude

There’s an axiom in photography that ‘you have to be there to get the shot,’ meaning that nature and events shape themselves, and the photographer freezes a moment in time from a particular place in space, and those things will never align just the same way again. This is so true of shooting skies, or of travel photography, when your own POV is in motion relative to your subject matter. I took this frame on November 7^th, 2012, on my fifth trip to the UK, from a Malaysian Airlines A380 on my way up to Kuala Lumpur on the first leg of the journey, and we had just crossed the Australian north coast. This is the evening light on the Timor Sea, the sun through thick weather reduced to that golden flare reflecting from the waves, as tropical cloud made a riot of shapes and forms, and infinite hues, all about. The sky was particularly forthcoming on that flight, with amazing cloudscapes and lighting qualities, that made the simple act of catching a plane into a photographer’s adventure. Minor post-processing—a touch of contrast and extra colour. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

One Sunset Among Many

 

Over the years I’ve had the chance to photograph many sunsets, sometimes with long series of frames capturing the whole event. This was one such occasion, on the way back from a drive down the Fleurieu which had taken in Hindmarsh Falls not long before (July 17^th, 2017). The vantage point was an overlook on the highway down Sellick’s Hill, giving a wonderful view out over the Gulf St Vincent, and the weather front approaching from the southwest over the sea was the perfect medium through which the declining sun could work its magic. I have dozens of frames from about this point to late in the event when colours had faded to pastel shades, but I can’t get enough of those with the richer tones. There was no photographic trickery here, just point and shoot at fair telephoto settings to exclude the silhouetted shoulders of hills. No enhancement was done, this is what it looked like and what the camera recorded. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

The Drama of Evening

Sunsets grab your attention in the most dramatic way—perhaps as much for their ephemeral nature as for their beauty. They last only minutes and every one is different, an infinite range of variation all down to the ever-changing clouds. This was one of the series I took from the vantage of Flinders University many years ago, this frame date-stamped February 13^th, 2005. I was in the final stretch if my Masters Degree at the time. I could have fiddled with this image a lot, and probably ended up losing the striking depth and vibrance of the moment. All I did was pull up the gamma value a couple of notches to bring out a little mid-tone detail, and take it one click sharper. I considered using fine rotation to level up the horizon but it was going to cut into the image at its edges in ways that would sacrifice something of the moment, so I left it as is. Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Changing Weather

Sunsets are an eternally fresh and wonderful subject for photographers to capture, and the passing events of sunrays and clouds are so ephemeral you must often just shoot what’s before you and see how the chip handles it. This frame, of the day's end through an incoming weather front, a welcome relief from Australia's summer heat, was captured almost nineteen years ago—February 11^th, 2005—and is part of a group of sunsets I photographed from Flinders University. I was finishing my Masters Degree at the time and was up and down to the campus frequently. Sunset in February is quite late, mid-evening, so I had obviously been working in the library or in a meeting, perhaps a student gathering I preparation for the new term about to begin. I took this shot, like a number of others, while walking down to get the bus home, through a part of the campus completely redeveloped in later years. Minimal enhancement was used—contrast, colour, sharpness and gamma value. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

River in the Sun

A simple but effective shot, looking into the late afternoon glare of a low sun on a wide sheet of water. This is the view from the north side of the River Tyne, at Tynemouth, in northeastern England. I visited Tynemouth Castle and Priory on the ancient and famous headland where three kings are said to be buried, including Malcolm IV of Scotland. This was the last full day in England of my 2010 trip, being Monday, November 15^th . The conference at the University of Sunderland concluded the previous day, and I took the Monday for a trip up the coast to Tyenmouth by bus, and a ferry ride across to the north. I walked around the castle and priory for hours, had very good fish and chips at a pub called The Turk's Head, on the highstreet opposite the castle frontage, then made my way back to my boarding house in Sunderland as evening gathered. This image is not modified in any way. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

End of Day

When I was a mid I loved shooting sunsets—capturing those glorious, ephemeral colours in the western sky. I would snap away with a Kodak 126 Instamatic, and I did quite well, given what I had to work with. Half a century on I still can't get enough of sunsets, and from time to timer have the opportunity to record the process at some length. This is one of a long series of frames taken looking west over the Adelaide plain to the Gulf St Vincent from a vantage at the top of the ranges, at the top of Range Road, on May 2^nd 2022. This angle is close enough to exclude the silhouetted power pylons just off camera to the right, which, though visually interesting for their own sake, are not terribly aesthetically pleasing. This makes it a natural world image, subtracting the machine subtext of the towers. No image manipulation was done on this one. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Framing the Sunset

Sunsets have an enduring appeal and every one is subtly different, which makes them perpetual fodder for the photographer on the lookout. This is part of a set taken at Flinders University, looking west to the sea, on the evening of February 13^th, 2005—I was on my way home, walking down from the ridges to get the bus, and this magnificent cloudscape just begged to be photographed. The framing is simple but exploits the juxtaposition of the linear, built environment with the organic expression of nature—the trees, yes, but the sunset itself is nature at its most aloof to human doings. This part of the university no longer exists, it was redeveloped many years ago, which makes such images something of a time capsule. The image is squared up a little with custom rotation, and slightly balanced for colour and contrast. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Lytham Rd, Blackpool

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The sky was the motivating factor in this image. It was just after sundown on a chilly evening in November, 2006. I was standing on a bridge, looking north toward Blackpool Tower, and was exploring for a while before retreating to my hotel. The short wavelength light in the shadowed street is an interesting, soft registration, while the clouds make for an artistic counterpoint to the angular, built environment. Sharpened and enhanced, with gamma correction bringing up middle values and contrast hardening them off. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Like a fire in the sky

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My brother said, "Grab the camera and get outside, NOW!" He'd seen this sunset brightening, shade by shade, and he knew how I love to capture sunset shots. I started doing this kind of work in optical cameras, and the switch to digital was not so easy. The digitals love to "correct" your exposure, if/when you leave them on their automatic settings ... and your sunset colors (or other effects) vanish. They just switch right back to normal, ordinary shots that look, well, blah. You need to find the manual (M) settings, and learn how to adjust shutter speeds and apertures. These may be "virtual" on digital cameras, but the settings are shere; you just need to find them! The colors really looked like this. All I had to do was trim the shot to get the edge of a roof out of it, and then resize it. Photo by Jade, 2006.

Heavenly shades of evening

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You know the old song lyric, "Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time..." This picture embodies those words. It was a glorious evening, cool and calm, ahead of a change in the weather. It's that change you're looking at coming up here, with the clouds at just the right altitude to catch the light from a sun that was already down. The picture has been cropped to cut out a/c units and chimneys, and a phone wire; but the colors have only been "tweaked" a little, to make the digital photo reflect the actual evening. The toughest thing about getting these shots with a digital camera is convincing the onboard computer not to adjust the exposure. Good cameras have a "normal" setting which offers WYSIWYG -- "what you see is what you get." Photo by Mel, 2006.

Don't Judge a Photo by its Luminosity

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A broiling hot day in the tropics draws to a close, the sun sinking into a molten ocean and soft, perfumed night brings relief to bronzed locals... Not really. Luminosity and heat are not quite the same thing in practical terms. This was the Adelaide foreshore in spring '07, a breezy, cool evening in which the sun's direct warmth was quite tolerable and soon missed when the day came to its end. I left exposure up to the automatics, while anticipating a very fast shutter speed, and used a little optical zoom to emphasise the sun itself. FinePix S5600, auto. Photo by Mike, 2007.

Last Light

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I've always been fascinated by the lenticular effects of the atmosphere, nowhere better seen than in the magnification and flattening of the sun on the horizon, where it's light passes through the greatest possible angular distance of atmosphere, subject to haze and distortion, and that familiar rippling effect. This was sundown over the Gulf St Vincent just before moonrise over the Adelaide Hills, in Spring 2007. The FinePix S5600 handled a wide range of lighting conditions from full daylight right through to moonlight, with varying degrees of success, on this cool, windy evening. Here the sea is captured at high telephoto, looking like molten lead just before the sun disappeared. Image by Mike.