Postcard from Southern Utah - Sunrise, Sunset

As most photographers learn early, the best light for photos can be found shortly after sunrise and shortly before sunset. At these times, the sun is lower in the sky thereby bending the light rays to give the light a more reddish glow. Photographers call this time the "golden hours" (shouldn't it be called the reddish hours?). But there is more to sunrise and sunset than the golden hours that can really produce some interesting images.

Before the sun actually breaks the horizon at sunrise and after the sun sets, there is a very reddish or pinkish glow in the sky and if you throw in a few clouds, some amazing pictures can be had. Fortunately or unfortunately, whatever is in the foreground is only going to be rendered as a silhouette. With film or digital cameras, if you try and expose your image for the foreground object, you will completely blow out the sky. Therefore, one should expose the image using the sky for your exposure values.

To this end, I hereby present three photos I was fortunate to take in the last few days. All have some clouds in them to enhance the lighting effects.

The first picture is of the very famous "Balanced Rock" in Arches National Park taken at sunset. The second image was taken the next morning from my campsite in Devil's Garden, also at the Arches. The third photo was taken a few days earlier and shows The Needles at sunset. I hope you enjoy them.

Try this yourself sometime. All you need is a camera, a tripod, and a shutter release button attached to your camera as the exposure time can be too long for a hand held camera. If your camera has anti-shake built in, you might be able to do hand held. The Balanced Rock photo was handheld with my Nikon D200 with using an anti-shake lens(known as VR in the Nikon world).

Now, one other thing: the foreground object should either fill most of the screen from top to bottom, fill 3/4 of the screen, or 1/4 of the screen. Never, and I mean never, have the object fill 1/2 of the screen and the sky the other half. It makes the shot compositionally boring. Either the sky or the foreground object must be the dominate part of the photo and the other a compliment to it.

Enough preaching. Go have fun.