Looking To the East? Or Looking To The West? Which Sunset Photo Do You Like Best?
Sunday afternoon, I looked at the sky and clouds from my house and realized there was potential for a very nice sunset. So I made a last minute decision to grab my camera gear and head to a great and nearby location, Donner Lake in Truckee, California. This spot is only about a 10-minute drive from my house and I knew there were still some yellow autumn leaves hanging onto a few of the trees along the shore. Fortunately, my decision paid off and I ended up with two nice "keeper" photos.
The top photo is a view of the Donner Lake shoreline, looking to the west. The bottom photo was actually taken a few minutes before the top photo. It is of the same bunch of trees but looking to the east. I like both of the photos, but I'm curious...
Which of these two Donner Lake sunset photos do you like best?
click images to view large
#1 Looking to the west.
#2 Looking to the east.
How I shot it:
Both of these images were shot with a Canon 5DS R and a 16-35mm lens, the lens was set to 16mm for the top one, 19mm for the bottom. The top photo was a 1.3-second long exposure, the bottom photo was 1-second. Both were shot with an ISO of 100 and an aperture of f7.1. I needed the aperture to be fairly wide because I used two flash units to light up the yellow leaves in the trees. If I were to use a small aperture (like I usually like to do for landscapes) the light from the flashes would not have been enough to brighten up the leaves and they would have looked more like silhouettes. I also used a graduated neutral density filter but instead of using it to darken the sky, I used it to darken the bright side of the photo, which helped further lighten the trees. If that's confusing... I explain it and show the technique in my latest @dtube video. A decent amount of editing was done in Photoshop's Camera RAW feature where I lightened the shadows and leaves to bring out more detail.
If you missed my latest photo "adventure" video, you can check it out HERE
Thank you for looking, reading, and watching!
Oh! P.S.
Today is a voting day here in the USA so I have a favor to ask...
Please vote for me!!! Haha! I usually don't ask for votes and I'm not asking for an upvote on this post. But I am currently in a @qurator Photo Friday competition. I've been nominated for their competition before but I have never actually won. Voting is easy, and you don't have to vote for my photo of course, but please vote for your favorite photo and lets help get a little more action on @qurator's competition. All you have to do is look for my scary ghost photo in the comments of the Photo Friday post, and give it a little upvote. They judge based on the number of upvotes, not the value of the upvotes, so don't go big, even a 1% upvote helps. Here's the post with my nomination in the comments: https://steemit.com/qurator/@qurator/qurator-s-photo-friday-photography-competition-48 Thank you!!!
Scott Thompson
Scott Shots Photography
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I like the western view of your beautiful sunset!
Voted for your scary ghost on Qurator's post @scottshots!
Oh, double thank you @iovaccae! I appreciate the feedback and the Qurator vote. Cheers!!!
I sure love the western look to your sunset :-)
Eastern is real sweet also, I do try to look behind
when watching the sun set and see what is
going on in the opposite direction! ☀
Voted!! 👍 ✔
Thank you and thank you @shasta! The color was pretty wild to the west... Yes, looking both directions can lead to some pretty great sights. I was lucky to be in one of those spots that I could get a nice composition with a foreground when looking both directions. Cheers!
North.
But... Oh, never mind... Haha!
LOL, it means I liked them both the same!
For me first is The best. Nice color. Beautiful Sunset.
Cool, thank you for letting me know! Yes, it was a beautiful sunset indeed. Cheers!
@scottshots, Wow first sunset capture so adorable and mind going to be meditation. Brilliant color mixed up there. Awesome.
Thank you @madushanka! That sunset was quite the incredible one to see. They have been really nice lately, hopefully I'll get out to photograph another sunset soon... Cheers!
I like the first one.
Cool, thank you for letting me know @sjarvie5!
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