Sunset Photos: Wait for the Afterglow

A lot of times when I'm shooting sunsets at this particular beach, I'll see people hop out of their cars snap a few frames as the sun hits the horizon and then leave. Those are probably nice shots, but the real show often begins about five or ten minutes after the sun has hit the horizon and it's called the afterglow. It's during this brief afterglow that color flares up into the sky the clouds really catch fire.

The reason that the afterglow is so intense is just that the angle of the sun is causing direct light rays to bounce around in the cloud cover and scatter on the layers of dust, moisture and pollution. Believe it or not, the more pollution there is, the better the sunsets. After a forest fire or a volcano eruption the sunsets are often spectacular for weeks and weeks as the dust lingers in the atmosphere. Even more amazing, these clouds of volcanic dust travel around the globe in jet streams and, in fact, when Krakatoa exploded in August of 1883 the sunsets were so intense as far away as New Haven, Connecticut (nearly half the circumference of the Earth away) that people thought the sky was on fire. There are reports of the fire companies responding to fires in the sky!

Next time you're photographing a sunset, especially if there are interesting clouds, hang out and wait for the real show to begin. And incidentally, not only did I not saturate the colors in this shot (same clouds and sunset as the last two postings), but I actually had to tone them down because the yellows, pinks and reds were bleeding together too much. The only area that I saturated a tiny bit is in the reflection in the smooth water at the bottom of the frame to the left of center--I just wanted that spot of color to brighten the foreground a bit.

Reflect on Less Conventional Compositions

In some ways photography can be a very literate graphic medium: if you aim the camera at a sailboat passing through the sunset everyone will look at your photograph and know exactly what you had in mind when you shot it. But just how obvious your subjects are is really up to you--they can be literate and straightforward, or you can spin them slightly into the abstract.

One way to turn away from reality a bit is to literally turn away from your subject and look for its reflection. You can find reflections in some of the most unexpected places--shiny car fenders, polished car hubcaps or even in the surface of a puddle after the rain.

I shot the photo here in Galilee, Rhode Island (a beautiful New England fishing village if you're looking for one too shoot) during the peak of a very colorful sunset. But after spending about 20 minutes watching the sunset get more and more intense and framing it against very common subjects like the rigging on fishing boats and a ferry boat passing by, I wanted to find something that would capture the color and drama of the sunset in a dramatic but more freeform way. As I walked along the pier between giant fishing boats, I noticed that the sunset was reflecting in the almost quicksilver surface of the water and so I tried to shoot photos of just the reflection--but something was missing. The shot could have been made anywhere and I wanted it to have some connection to the locale.

Then as I came out between two boats tied to a narrow dock, I saw this rope hanging down into the sunset from the side of a fishing boat and it was exactly what I was after. I don't know if anyone else gets the sunset/fishing boat connection, but because of the snippet of the boat in the shot, I'll never forget where I shot it. The waterline stripe on the boat and the rope bring back the moment perfectly for me. I've made other similar shots of reflections to get the same effect--once photographing the Eiffel Tower in the reflection of a tour-bus window and another time photographing neon signs reflecting in the windshield of a car in Las Vegas.

Sometimes turning away from your subject and looking for reflections is the best way to find new viewpoints. Not everyone will appreciate your flights into whimsy, but who cares. It's a great exercise in expanding your creative reach.

Hide the Sun in Your Sunset Photos

Sunset photos are relatively easy to expose for because there is a lot of latitude or leeway in creating a "good" exposure. If you underexpose a bit (give too little exposure) then the photo will be dark; if you overexpose (give too much exposure) the photo will be too light. Because sunsets are so colorful and bold, however, it's likely that unless you really miss the mark, a wide range of exposures will look good.

One exception is when you include a very bright sun in the frame when you're setting the exposure. Because the sun is so bright (bright enough to light half the planet at a time), it will wreak havoc with exposure and cause your camera to think there is far more light in the scene than there actually is. Result: a grossly underexposed (dark) photo. One way to avoid that is to aim the lens away from the sun itself (actually exclude the sun from the composition) and meter from a bright area of sky without the sun. Then use your meter-lock function (usually this means holding the shutter release partially down) to lock in that reading. Now recompose and shoot and you should have an exposure based on the sky, but not the sun.

The problem is that sometimes there is no clear area of bright sky to meter from. When I was shooting this pretty sunset at Cypress Gardens in Florida, for example, I was surrounded by trees and didn't have a clear shot at open sky. Instead, I took advantage of the trees in the scene and simply hid the sun behind the center tree when I set my exposure. In fact, I found that once the sun was behind the tree, I was able to expose for the scene exactly as the composition shows. I got a perfect exposure with the camera in the Program (auto) mode.

So next time you're shooting a bright sunset and can't take a sky reading, just hide the sun behind something in your scene and your exposures should be perfect.