Sunset in Annapolis
Last week, my girlfriend and I drove up to Annapolis for dinner. I brought along all my equipment hoping to get some night photos of the town. I spent a few hours taking shots all around the town and only ended up with one that I was actually pretty happy with.
The following photo was taken on the Compromise St./6th St. bridge in Annapolis as the sun was going down behind a few thick clouds. Map below:
Those of you reading via email may need to visit the site to see the embedded map below…
View Larger Map
I set up my tripod on the bridge sidewalk. I used my new 70-200mm lens fitted with a circular polarizer filter. I wanted a long exposure and small aperture in order to really bring out the rays of sunshine so I decreased the aperture down to f/32 which allowed me to do a 2 second exposure. Here is the result:
Click for larger size…
This print is available for sale in my online portfolio.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Shawn
Great sunset photo. I hadn’t thought about trying to shoot from the bridge. I’ll have to give a try next time I’m in Annapolis
Patty
April 7th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Thanks Patty! I had almost forgotten about it myself and managed to get lucky with the clouds.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Nice shot, I like the sun rays. I did notice that you did some lightening in PS on the boats, but the depth and color is lacking making them look a little too flat. Perhaps they’d look better just as a silhouette.
And if I saw it wrong, ignore what I said
April 7th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Thanks Gyuri! Actually I did do a bit of lightening on the boats. I had a real hard time with it in making sure they maintained their color. Still trying to figure out how I’m going to bring them out more without making the photo look weird. The original photo was underexposed on purpose and the silhouette didn’t quite do it for me.
I may revisit this photo in the future once I increase my Photoshop-foo. We’ll see.
Thanks!
April 7th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Looks great Shawn. Almost has a sci-fi effect. Like the sun is trying to blast through that cloud.
hmm…maybe I have been seeing too many movies?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Annapolis has been home for me and my wife for a long time now and I must admit that I never get tired of that kind of sunset. Beautiful photograph Shawn.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Nice shot! Love the way the sun light is beaming over the cloud. RE: the boats, I’d much prefer it if they weren’t there at all…although Gyuri’s suggestion about the silhouettes sounds very interesting.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Thanks for the comments everyone! I’m definitely going to continue work on the foreground. Not sure what I’m gonna do yet, though.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Hey Shawn - Nice Capture - HEre is a Option - If you shot Raw you could process one with the boats brighter and open in CS3 and process one with the backgound the way you like and open in CS3, stack them, create a layer mask, hit D, ctrl - backspace, to fill layer mask black, use a white paint brush and paint top image in, if you make a mistake, hit X, paint back over with black, X to go back to white - this type of edit works great with sunset’s (landscapes) because you can mess with the opacity (painting grey) around the horizon line. Thanks for the comment on my site.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Thanks Mike! That’s actually similar to what I did but instead I used the eraser tool to bring out the bottom layer. Unfortunately, the first time I did it, the color tones of the boats appeared to be different than what you would expect with such a sunset. I redid the image (the one posted here) with an increase in the reds and yellows in the foreground. I am going to tweak it a little more, though, to see if I can make it any better.
Thanks again!
April 8th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Mike, thats normally what you’d do, but I’m guessing that because of the exposure set to best show the rays, the boats are in shadow and too underexposed to have any decent amount of color information. Probably would have been a good candidate for multiple bracketed exposures.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:00 am
The only word I can think is–STUNNING.
Thanks for sharing.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Thanks kriz!
April 12th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Fantastic & so beautiful. As many sunsets as I take I never seem to tire of them! Love the boats in the foreground they really add interest!
April 12th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Thanks Jen!
April 16th, 2008 at 11:03 am
very nice pic. enthralling.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Thanks narissa!