As a professional event and corporate photographer working in Edinburgh and throughout Scotland, things have been a bit different due to this crisis affecting us all and I have had more opportunities to photograph other subjects. Now, when I started out taking photographs as an amateur photographer, like everyone else, I photographed my fair share of sunsets. I tend not to take so many nowadays, partly as I have taken so many throughout my life and also it is really the easiest subject to photograph. However, there are a few basic rules and tips that all landscape photographers will adhere too and here they are:
- Composition is still important, if you haven’t the time to move location, make sure your composition is strong, often use the outline of buildings as a silhouette, as long as it has an interesting shape.
- Expose for the sky, you usually don’t want too much detail in the non-sunset part of the photo.
- Bracket your exposure, this can affect the colours in the image and gives you a choice of images.
- If time permits, try and use a tripod and take a long exposure, if possible on water, this will give you wonderful detail in the water and will enable you to take photos until near darkness.
- You need to react quickly, often, especially in the winter, the colours will only last for a few minutes.
- Make sure you know where the sun will set and that you give yourself the opportunity to be at the best possible location when it happens. You should also try gauge the time when the sun will set and rise. One of the photos in this blog was taken at 4.30am, when I woke up in the middle of the night.
- This tip, I think applies to all types of professional photography and it is – look at what everyone else is doing and then do something different, it’s always been my motto.
Anyway, hope this helps. Until next time. Kind Regards, Colin
www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk and www.edinburghphotographer.com.