Autumn Sunset

I spent most of the day inside today...studying and watching Netlflix. But I did manage to get out for a run in the afternoon, and the colors were amazinggggg. The late afternoon sunlight was hitting the trees in just the right way, illuminating them like they were glowing.

So I sprinted back home and grabbed my gear. Well, maybe not sprinted because it was, like, two miles away...but still.

As soon as I could, I was on top of Peat's Hill. Lucky timing too, because I hit the last 5 minute window of light before the sun dipped below some clouds and then under the horizon. But before that I managed to get the shot I wanted.

Having only a small amount of time, I relied on my light meter in the camera to set up an exposure. I knew I wanted a low ISO (100) and a sharp photo, so I shot at f16. The shutter speed turned out to be 1/3 of a second.

Little bit about how cameras meter, and how they get tricked. The most common way they get tricked is by very bright objects in the frame. Such as the sun, or snow. Tonight, shooting west there was obviously the sun was directly in the camera. The camera saw the sun and thought, "wohhhhh, that's really bright! I better make everything really dark! :D" no...bad camera. Not it's fault, but you have to take that into account. So tonight, when I took the meter reading, I made sure to have the sun completely out of the frame. I also made sure to put everything in the frame that I was going to shoot, so that the meter would be as accurate as possible.

Shooting on a tripod, keeping everything level. Also, I put the horizon on the top third line. This is usually the most pleasing place to put a horizon when you want to highlight the foreground. When you want the sky, put the horizon on the lower third line.

Editing, merge to panorama in Ps. Then use the stamp tool to rebuild some of the bottom of the frame. With panoramas, there is usually some weird stuff going on the edges of the frame due to warping and lens correction. I wanted the bottom of frame, so I needed to rebuild some of the areas that were empty. It was grass, so simply stamping areas back in was easy enough.

In Lr, I tried to keep it as natural as possible. Just a bit of clarity and shadows up. Just a bitttttt. Then more clarity in the sky and blue tinting to make it more dramatic. Yay. That's all.

See you tomorrow!