When the Sun Goes Down

All is not lost when golden hour fades. A lot of photographers will pack up and go home because they think the light is all gone. That's not quite the best decisions a lot of the time.

Take tonight for example, the clear skies made the east light up in amazing purple tones after the sun set and was gone. Just before dusk, on my way to class, I happened to park right where I could see Mt. Baldy. Boy, as it pretty. The sky was deep purple behind the snow white peak, and the trees were frosted on the slopes. Quickly, I pulled out my camera and tripod to fire away a few shots.

Since it was dusk, there wasn't exactly much light to be had. I wanted to shoot at f11 to get a sharp photo, which meant I needed to use 1/3s as a shutter speed. Or so my camera said. This exposure would give an overall neutral photo, which is what meters try to do. However, there is little contrast in the scene, so to really make it look good, you have to actually overexpose the foreground by about a stop, and underexpose the sky. This gives you white snow, but then rich colors in the sky.

For the composition, I wanted to show case the sky more than the snowy peak. To do that, I placed the peak to occupy the lower third of the image. This allowed the sky to take the majority of the image, and before more dominate. However, sky will always have a hard time overcoming land, so even though the sky takes up much more space, the photo is still balanced.

Editing was a little tricky for this one. Out of the camera, it's a very flat photo. There's barely any highlights or shadows, let alone whites and blacks. The contrast slider helped a bit, but it as a little too ham fisted for my taste.

What I did instead was a local adjustment over just the mountains to brighten them up. I raised the contrast a hair, the highlights all the way, and the clarity up quite a bit. This made them pop more, and really give the photo back what it was lacking.

For the sky, I adjusted the color channels instead of the overall luminosity. First off, I made the purples and magentas more red. This translated to a darker, richer purple in the sky, which I felt more accurately represented what I saw. Then I increased the saturation of those colors, as well as the luminance of purples. More color, and a little bit brighter as well.

Now it's off to sleep with me, as the sun set a full 8 hours ago and that's when people should go to sleep. I just decided that.

See you tomorrow!