Assignment 2 ~ Fire & Water

I photographed as many sunsets as I was able to, partly because they are so beautiful and partly because I am fascinated with capturing a spectacular green flash. With the clouds on the horizon there was no green flash on this evening (they couldn't be seen until the sun fell behind them), but they clouds themselves added such a great element to the images. They made it look to me, as the title of the photo suggests, like a fire burning in the distance on the horizon. I used my telephoto lens, which I usually use at least for some of the photos I take of sunsets in order to put as much emphasis on the sun as it is setting and to get the best images of green and/or blue flashes if they occur. I experimented a lot on this trip with shooting in either aperture or shutter priority and in particular I experimented with using as high an aperture value as possible while still keeping my shutter speeds as high as they need to be because I shoot the last moments of the sun falling below the horizon in continuous shooting mode. Because the shutter speeds are falling continuously I always use a tripod, as I did here, because I am unable to hold the camera still for long enough. This photo was shoot in aperture priority mode at f/8, 1/125 sec at 300 mm. This photo was cropped to put as much emphasis on the image where the sun is at the horizon instead of the entire sky. It was processed in Lightroom.