Shoot Stunning Sunsets With a Digital Camera - Digital Photography Tips Complementary Guide

What draws us to a beautiful sunset? What makes you want to capture that scene? Perhaps the warm colours and tones ... and then there are so many variations of sunsets, which adds that extra excitement, so let's take a look at these digital photography tips on how best to capture a glowing sunset with your digital camera ...

Timing and Composure

Get set up before the sunset starts, at least half an hour beforehand. A couple of things to consider: the exact time the sun sets, which is the moment the sun drops below the horizon. Note this could be affected bearing in mind your landscape, that is, if there are any mountains which could block the sun, before it has chance to reach the horizon. So it's worth finding the right location where you have an uninterrupted view of the sun, perhaps from a beach, edge of a lake or cliff edge ... anywhere with an uncluttered view. This will greatly emphasise the sun and the sky for a stunning sunset shot

You must also consider as the sun approaches the horizon, this is the time to start shooting, as you should see some dynamic scenes before the sun disappears. Take a couple of shots every few minutes to capture the changing light from the sun's rays once the sun nears the horizon. If you have a tripod, this will help compose your shot by keeping everything steady for your framing.

VIP

Be careful when preparing your shot not to look directly at the sun, either through your viewfinder or with a naked eye, to avoid damaging your eyes. Your digital camera will have an LCD panel, so use this to frame your shot for safety. It will help you with more accurate framing.

Can Dust Particles affect my shot ... True or False?

True ... Dust particles and humidity from clouds can have a great effect on how the light from the sun's rays will give you that dynamic sunset. When the sun is near the horizon the light has to travel its longest wavelengths. The light travels though dust particles and water vapour from the clouds, and so helps create that dramatic sky, giving those deep rich warm tones of red, orange and yellow. If you happen to be close to a town, city or desert on a humid evening, sand dust particles is perfect for scattering light - you'll be in luck to get that 'stunning' sunset.

Set the Scene for that Creative Sunset

Now you're ready to start shooting you'll need to frame your sunset. There is a rule of thirds, and to use it, make sure to keep the horizon level low (bottom third of your framed scene) filling the above two-thirds of your frame with the sky. Be creative by keeping some darker foreground in your shot as this highlights the sky, adding more appeal. You may wish to add other objects, for example trees, figures, overhanging ferns (if on a beach), birds etc, which should give you an attractive silhouette, against your glowing sky. If there happens to be low clouds around, then this will add even more dynamism to your shot - you can imagine the scene right now!

Be patient, be creative, I hope you find these digital photography tips useful, but most of all ... have fun!

Digital Photography Tips - What's Wrong With This Picture? Part 2

What's wrong with your pictures? Why are they not selling? In this article, you'll get hammered with a few digital photography tips about how to make more photo sales. Plus you'll learn the things you need to do and should not do when it comes to the digital photography business...

So let's get down to business. The first thing you need to understand is this, if you're TRULY serious about making money in this business. There are way too many flower, tree, landscape, self portrait, pretty pet and sunset/beach photos being submitted to stock photo websites. If you're doing that, you need to stop it right now. I'm not kidding. Stop it.

Then take yourself to the top stock photo websites and read their FAQs. Look for 'photos we need and photos we DON'T want.' They'll phrase it differently but that's it in a nutshell. Focus intently on the 'photos we need' (or photo themes in demand) section. Every stock photo website will have a list like this somewhere. After all, they want to save your time too.

Dude, this is why so many photos get rejected! Think of it like this. A stock photo agency has a job to do. Something like, provide beautiful and appropriate photography to fit their customers needs. So YOU need to be savvy here. You need to find out what their customers want. And they'll happily tell you too! (See above). Are you beginning to get the picture here?

You see, what they don't want is another pet or sunset photo. Why? Well, simply because there's already 10 billion of these types of images floating around out there! And not only is there TOO many, but a lot of these pics aren't going to keep art directors up all night either. :)

So the point here is that you want to tap into what the NEEDS are. And then you go take photos that FIT those needs. That's how you'll do well with your photography. And if that's not a digital photography tip that you can take to the (photo) bank then I'll eat my e-hat!

How to Sharpen Your Photos - Digital Photography Tips

Digital photography is quite different than taking pictures with film. Unlike film cameras, digital photos are turned into pixels and stored digitally. The main problem that can arise with storing pictures in pixels is that these pixels can get "noisy" and make for very unpleasing images. Because of this problem, many digital cameras nowadays have filters created within the camera that will soften this noise and make the noise less pronounced.

If you are having to get rid of noise and edit it out in photo editing software then you'll probably have realized that certain situations create noise that is much harder to reduce or get rid of than others. Getting rid of noise from a night shot with a very high ISO can be very easy if the photo is of a bright building and the noise is in the dark sky. Because the sky is dark and mostly one color the noise can easily be stamped out. However, if there was noise over the bright building this would be very hard to get rid of.

When the digital cameras reduce the noise themselves the result can make for blurrier photos. Many people will try to get rid of this blur by sharpening the image. However, when sharpening the image the noise that was reduced from the camera will become much more obvious. That's why sharpening the image can make the image much nosier.

Fortunately, there is a rather simple way to sharpen photos without actually sharpening the noise that the picture has. The way we do this is through the color modes in a photo editing software, preferably Photo Shop. There are various color modes. For digital images the main mode used is RGB or red, green, and blue. For print the color modes used are CMYK. If you are going to print your image you should try sticking with CMYK. Another color mode that you can use is the LAB mode. The lab mode has three different aspects to it. The first aspect is the lighting. The second is the green and red parts of the photo. And the last aspect is the yellow and blue parts of the photo. This means that you can adjust any one of these without affecting the others. You can adjust the lighting without affecting the colors.

What you can do with this special mode is choose to make the light mode sharper and not make the color channels sharper. This will sharpen the noise of that specific node but the others won't be sharpened.

Of course, many special techniques for digital photos won't work if your photo is too noisy to start with. So the best thing to do is to take the best picture possible at the start.