Magnificent sunbeam: The other perspective (Part III.)

This week's post is the last one in "The other perspective" series. (Links to Part I and Part II) My intention was to give some insight into what I think about sunset photography. More specifically, how I see it right now... Photography itself is just a method of interpreting the world and preserving memories; it needs to constantly evolve with us through our lifetime.

Because the world is also changing...  I discover new things and unique moments literally every day,  since I have started taking photos after a long break. Just a nice fallen leaf on the pavement, a remarkable cloud formation, or beautiful forest scenery lit by scattered light. I didn't really notice them before, because everything seemed to be just part of the "normal life".  However those moments are noteworthy and not just simple accessories or scenes of everyday life. That's an important thing I realized. 

 

Compostion

Let's talk about the last topic, which is the composition. One thing you may have noticed that I don't make HDR shots. In fact, ground subjects are intentionally black. This leads to flat images (without any 3D perspective), but I consider them to be more like paintings than ordinary landscape photos. Other advantage is that black objects help to emphasize the colors of the sky.

 

Important decision is selecting the lens and picture orientation. I don't have any wide angle lens at the moment, so using portrait orientation is the solution, when I want to add more vertical sky/foreground to the picture. On the other hand, landscape is better, when both the sky and foreground is interesting . It also feels a more natural choice for sizeable subjects, like distant hills.

Regarding wide angles; for me, 35-50mm is wide enough in most cases, especially when shooting distant subjects. Most of the times it is not possible to fill a 28mm or wider frame with interesting elements of the sky. Wide angle pictures on photo sharing sites seem to emphasize foreground instead. (By the way I am planning to buy one, but haven't yet decided which focal length.) One additional problem with wide angles is that the sun looks too small; that's where telephoto lenses come into the play! Sun can look impressively big and dominate the whole frame. Moreover telephoto lenses compress the perspective compared to wide angles, so flattening effect, described in the first paragraph, is even stronger.

 

Now it's time to see an image. Today's picture is called Harmonic tension. I would you say, this one is highly experimental; focused at close distance, high contrast between blue and orange, and just a small amount of sky.

 

 

Harmonic tension

 

 

Metadata

Camera: Canon 5D

Lens: Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 135mm f3.5 MC