At first I was really disappointed on the evening I stopped to take sunset photos at Presque Isle in Marquette… but I’ve learned over the years that sunsets are not always predictable. Usually not, in fact. And things can change very quickly. The evening I took this photo, it was 95% very bland, with soft even clouds not allowing for much of a light show. But at one point, the sun peeked through in a very pretty (though slightly Monty Python) kind of way.
The thing that really taught me this lesson had happened a few years back – I’d gone to a park about 45 minutes outside of Ann Arbor to catch the sunset and do some shots around a small lake there. The sunset was pretty disappointing, and at one point I gave up and we hopped in the car to head home. Right as we got to the exit of the park’s road that connected to the main road, there was an explosion of pink/red light in the rear view mirror. I stopped and looked back, and then raced back to the beach. The cloud layer had been at just the right height so that it covered the light for most of the sunset, until it just hit the horizon and then reflected an amazing amount of color. Since then, I try to never assume it’ll stay consistent through the whole evening.
Download: Sunset_Silhouette-Asgard_Photography_IIMG_0864.jpg
Camera Settings
F-stop: f/22
Exposure: 1/50 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 55mm