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Some photos and a question (photography)

You need to underexpose sunsets to keep from blowing out the highlights, which makes the darker parts way dark, but that's just how it is.
 
Originally posted by: episodic
Dinner
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/episodic/chickfried.jpg

A colorful picture
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/episodic/sign.jpg





This is my question - this was a very gorgeous sunset - a bright orange ball - casting a deep orange glow on everything. How should I have photographed it. I have a canon a510. It came out pretty disappointing - no orange glow and a blurred ball of light.
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/episodic/resize.jpg
Click to expand...

Would have helped to add a filter, but I don't think you can do that with an A510. You could have taken the picture through your sun glasses perhaps. Then jacked up the shutter speed to avoid camera shake.
 
expose for the sun, not the trees or foreground.

Try lowering the ASA (200, even 100) and then underexpose.

That might get the effect you are looking for.
 


This is my question - this was a very gorgeous sunset - a bright orange ball - casting a deep orange glow on everything. How should I have photographed it. I have a canon a510. It came out pretty disappointing - no orange glow and a blurred ball of light.
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/episodic/resize.jpg
Click to expand...


1. Rotate camera 90 degrees prior to taking the shot
2. Underexpose the shot in a serious way = that the ugly road turns to black and the colors of the sky are visible.
 
i would have adjusted my lighting, used vivid on my manual settings, or used a landscape setting, made sure my auto flash was off and and a large picture file
 
The human mind is a fine filter of reality. You saw the sunset, but didn't see the telephone pole, the campaign sign etc. You focused on what was interesting. What you need to learn to do is translate that into a flat, static image.

I'll toss out three things in no particular order.

First is exposure. As Wally and others have said, to get the sun, you need to underexpose the scene, and by a lot. Any camera's ability to capture detail in light and shadow is extremely limited by comparison to the human eye. Even if this wasn't true, monitors and printers wouldn't be able to display the results. Take that into account.

Second, you need to choose what in the scene is important and focus on that. You need to get rid of those things which are distracting. Face it, telephone lines don't add much to a landscape, but again mentally you filtered them out. No such luck on a print.

Third, an image needs to draw you into it to make an impact. It competes with the desktop, the wall, the cat - whatever happens to be in the same field of view as the pic. Therefore you need to fill the frame with the subject. Subject itself is subjective, or perhaps better, can be abstract. It can be an object of course, but it could be color, or texture, or shape, or the illusion of movement. Pretty much anything.

Cliff's notes:
Expose properly

Select the subject, and eliminate the rest. Don't try to "say" too much.

Fill the frame and emphasize that subject.



 
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