No 2 Sunsets are the same

As much as I LOVE sunsets (READ: How much I hate capturing generic sunset style photos), I love the gradients that they make in the sky. Some of the best that nature provides us in fact.

So  this weekend's experiment - taking similar "sunset style" shots at Pumicestone Passage bridge at Bribie Island at the same time (roughly) on two consecutive days (Friday/Saturday).

Using the 50mm fixed, I took pics from the bridge and nearby shore at approximately 5:15pm....ish. Unfortunately I didn't keep a reference to take them from the exact point   : (   Although I did keep the same white balance in order to show the colour change between the days

I used Aperture priority mode on my camera, as I wanted to play with depth of field a bit. I mainly played around with f11 and 1.8.

There was barely any clouds in the sky on day 1, so we ended up with a nice orange glow at the horizon, with an occasional green hue slightly above it as the light faded

And the results:


Day 1

My photographer companion Dan.

ISO200, f9 Exp 1/10 sec. 5:21pm 

ISO200, f11 Exp 1.3 secs. 5:31pm 

ISO200, f11 Exp 4 secs. 5:35pm 

What was interesting to find was as the shutter speed started to slow down, the water in the passage started to act more like a mirror rather then a rippled reflection.

On the Second day, there was a bit of cloud coverage, which helped to reflect a a nice bit of red into the picture, which faded back into the usual orange glow like the day before. Just having this difference made a complete change to the "feel" of the photos. 

Day 2:

ISO200, f9 Exp 1/40 sec. 5:16pm 

ISO200, f1.8 Exp 1/320 sec. 5:21pm (same time as previous day!)

It was amazing to see how quickly the colours changed within the space of 5 minutes!

ISO200, f5.6 Exp 1/25 sec. 5:22pm 

ISO200, f5.6 Exp 1/25 sec. 5:22pm 

 One thing that I realised was that the moon's position was different on the second day for some reason. Now I don't know why, but I would've assumed that it would've been in the same position at the same time of night? Weird huh?

(On a side note:. We had an RBT unit set up at the end of the bridge at the same time on both days, so it seems police tactics follow a timetable maybe?)


Conclusion:

No two sunsets are the same. If you are an avid sunset photo taker, I would suggest that you come back again to the same place on a different day, that way you can create a different "feel" without exhausting locations. A change in cloud cover could be all that it takes to make it stand out a bit more.