Friday, August 07, 2015

Sunsets rock!

Believe it or not, we've actually had a number of iffy nights for sunset seeking recently; last night, however, looked like it was shaping up to be a good one, so I hopped in the car and visited Larrabee State Park. I've done most of my sunset trips to Birch Bay this summer, and Larrabee is a bit different. The view of the sky is less open and there are more islands and things obstructing parts of the horizon; the tradeoff is more foreground possibilities (rocks, trees, etc) and the chance to use the background objects compositionally as well.

The sunset image below does this. I wanted to set the sunset against the park's cool rocks; I think the background islands complement the image as well. I had to break out the heavy artillery - my wide-angle lens, so I could include a greater area of the foreground rocks within the frame. I used f/20 to ensure that the depth of field encompassed everything.

Eventually, I'll need to correct for a bit of pincushion distortion, but it isn't too bad here. And I'm pleased with the lighting - I got a healthy amount of definition in the foreground, particularly for an unedited JPEG. Anyway, here it is: