Almaden Lake Sunset, 11/3/18 by Ronald Horii
There was a nice sunset at Almaden Lake. It was a nice opportunity to take some sunset pictures. Sunsets are tricky to shoot because of their wide dynamic range. It's hard to get the sky and the shadows properly exposed. One technique to do that is HDR imaging. These are HDR composite shots, made of anywhere from 3 to 5 exposures each, with auto-bracketing to capture the highlights and shadows. I combined the shots in Photomatix, then resized and tweaked the color balance and levels in Photoshop Elements. Here's more about HDR imaging: http://www.rhorii.com/Photo/HDR-Expmts.html
There was a nice sunset at Almaden Lake. It was a nice opportunity to take some sunset pictures. Sunsets are tricky to shoot because of their wide dynamic range. It's hard to get the sky and the shadows properly exposed. One technique to do that is HDR imaging. These are HDR composite shots, made of anywhere from 3 to 5 exposures each, with auto-bracketing to capture the highlights and shadows. I combined the shots in Photomatix, then resized and tweaked the color balance and levels in Photoshop Elements. Here's more about HDR imaging: http://www.rhorii.com/Photo/HDR-Expmts.html
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Sarah Hanna and 12 others like this.
Ellen Levy Finch
We've been having such gorgeous sunsets the last few days. And every day I think, I should go down to Almaden lake and try to capture then. Then, that evening, inevitably I'm in my car on some urban highway a long way from anything scenic. Thanks for sharing these; beautiful.
6 yrsReport
Ronald Horii
The nice thing about sunsets vs. sunrises is that you can see them coming (and you don't have to wake up early). If you see partial cloudy skies, there's a good chance, you'll have a nice sunset. If there are no clouds or solid clouds, forget it. Still, there's no guarantee. It's a roll of the dice. I've seen great cloud formations just before sunset that clear out right at sunset. I've seen solid cloud formations suddenly appear at sunset, blocking the sun. Even in this case, there were nice cloud formations to the west before sunset, but they cleared out at sunset. So the view towards the sun was not so great. However, the clouds moved to the south and provided the views shown above.
6 yrsReport
Ellen Levy Finch
And then there are the wonderful clouds in the sky that end up just turning gray and no color at all. So annoying! Don't they know we need photos?!?
6 yrsReport
