The Last Sunset of Spring

Last year, I got myself up bright and early to catch the sunrise on the summer solstice. I was rewarded with a terrific sunrise.

While this might look highly photoshopped, it wasn't.
This photo is pretty true to the way that I perceived it.

Unfortunately, when I checked the forecast for Sunday, all I saw was rain and cloud. I did set the alarm for 4AM just in case, but the sky was completely overcast, so I rolled over.

The nearest thing that I could think to do was to try to photograph the last sunset before the solstice. Somewhat lame, I know, but you do what you can.

So, Sue and I headed off to the Beckwith Trail in plenty of time for sunset, but it was not meant to be, or at least not the way that I would have preferred. Their was a bank of low clouds in front of the setting sun that would not yield. Darn them. lol

Regardless, I set the camera up to face the sunset as best I could. I used the widest focal point on my wide angle lens to capture a little of the trail on the right and the bard towards the left. You can see the cloud bank over the actual sunset, but there was a nice glow over the barn.

As the actual sunset zone got even worse, I shifted my camera more across the field toward the barn because the sky was more interesting that way. It's odd how that happens sometimes — that the effects are often best somewhat away from the sunset point.

All but the second photo (the first of this year) were HDR images, HDR being the blending of 2 or more photos. Because cameras tend to average light and, therefore, get no part of the image absolutely correct, what I normally do is to take one photo for the sky and one for the land or foreground. Having said that, I think the non-HDR shot turned out just as well as the others.

Anyway, this is HDR as it was intended: a method to blend photos in order to extend the dynamic range that the camera may not capture in one shot. It became fashionable for awhile to highly process HDR images for effects, but I want to keep most of my images realistic. I just want to capture the scene as close as possible to the way it was.

For each image I tried to find foreground interest, so I really worked those fence posts.

Do you have a preference? I keep changing my mind. Of this years three images, right now my favourite is the final one, but it was the middle one until I re-edited the final image to bring more light to the foreground and more orange to the sky.