Tree Line Sunset

It was a beautiful day today, so I thought I might just go out and take some pictures of the sunset. I've found that if there's a chance for a good photo, go out and try to get it. Even if you don't get it, you'll probably get something, which is better than getting nothing at all.

I shot a few different things this evening, but my favorite was shooting the skyline directly into the setting sun. The trees were in total silhouette, and the sun was making an awesome lens flare. I shot just on Av mode and let the camera do the heavy lifting for exposure.

When you're shooting into a bright light source, the autofocus will sometimes go crazy. This is because of lens flares, which cause a loss of contrast. The camera looks for contrast and the sorts to determine focus sharpness, so if you have a big flare it doesn't work very well. I usually block the sun with my hand to get rid of the flare, then focus and lock it.

In Lr, the first thing I did was to crop the image into a panoramic aspect ratio. I like long a skinny ratios for some reason, maybe because they distort how one can view an image. It's very selective and directive in showing the view something.

Secondly, I converted to b/w for the same reasons as cropping. I wanted to select and isolate what I wanted viewers to see in the image, which was not the colors of the sunset.

After that, I just went a little crazy with it. Upped the clarity and contrast all the way, added a ton of grain, and added a white vignette in.  So for any other image I basically ruined it. But I love what it did to this image. It almost looks like a analog image.

See you tomorrow!