{"id":204,"date":"2017-06-25T09:31:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-25T13:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/?p=204"},"modified":"2021-07-17T15:46:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T19:46:00","slug":"heading-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/heading-home\/","title":{"rendered":"“Heading Home” a sunset with foreground elements\u2014visual balance and technique."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Onboard the Schooner Olad returning to Camden harbor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many photographers, new, amateurs, and some professionals, shoot sunrises and sunsets\u2014nature at its most beautiful if you are\u00a0facing east or west at the right hour. That includes me! Sun-up and sundown photos proliferate the social media. Why not? The photographer is sharing a special moment that he or she witnessed. It’s a grand feeling.<\/p>\n

The reason I’m showing\u00a0this photo is because it IS a sundown, but, there’s\u00a0something going on in the foreground. I believe that is important, although\u00a0not always necessary. Why? It adds to the storyline. It helps put the photo into a context.<\/p>\n

To increase\u00a0the contextual impact of a photo with the sun setting or rising, consider including a telling foreground. In this case, it is the bow of the schooner Olad<\/em>, a 50-foot vessel out of Camden, ME.<\/p>\n

I shot photos for an hour as the sun descended and infused\u00a0the sky with beautiful colors. I tried from various parts of the vessel, all with the idea of capturing some aspect of the vessel in the foreground. This was it. When I clicked the shutter, my senses resonated as they often\u00a0do when I get a good shot.<\/p>\n

I believe\u00a0this shot works because of\u00a0the triangular balance of shapes in the left and middle. The two sails you see are headsails, one free flying, the other on a self-tending boom. Coupled with the boom, the three forms are triangular, which also repeats the theme of three, there being\u00a0three forms (similar to a pin-wheel).<\/p>\n

Without the bow and sails, this would be a nice sunset photo. If it existed, I’d probably crop half the water so the horizon was even lower. But having the three elements, proportionally balanced in the foreground, takes this mage up a few notches in terms of interest and engagement.<\/p>\n

_______________________<\/p>\n

Technical variables:<\/strong> There\u00a0are\u00a0at\u00a0least two\u00a0variables that challenge a photographer to attain well-exposed and sharp sunrise or sunset photos with foreground elements\u2014low light\u00a0conditions and distance between subjects (foreground to\u00a0infinity).\u00a0The sky usually requires a different exposure than the foreground unless you are happy with foreground silhouettes, which often work great. If you want everything in focus, you’ll need a small aperture to span the distance from near to far, thus allowing the greatest depth-of-field. Now you either have to use a tripod for a longer exposure or increase the ISO substantially. Increasing the ISO on some cameras creates visual noise in the image unless you have a camera with a relatively large sensor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Technical details:<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>This shot was taken using a Nikon D7100\u00a0at 1\/25 sec and\u00a0\u0192 1\/16. ISO was set to 640. Focal length on my Nikon 24-120mm lens was set to 24mm which translated to 36mm being on a camera with an APS-C sensor (1.5x crop factor). Despite my care in balancing the settings, I still needed Adobe Lightroom to open up the shadows on the foredeck and sails and reduce some highlights in the sky.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many photographers, new, amateurs, and some professionals, shoot sunrises and sunsets\u2014nature at its most beautiful if you are\u00a0facing east or west at the right hour. That includes me! Sun-up and sundown photos proliferate the social media. Why not? The photographer is sharing a special moment that he or she witnessed. It’s a grand feeling. The … Continue reading ““Heading Home” a sunset with foreground elements\u2014visual balance and technique.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,29,30,48,31],"tags":[11,93,94,92,91,95,96],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-image-critique","category-image-origin","category-image-story","category-method","tag-aesthetics","tag-camden","tag-me","tag-olad","tag-schooner","tag-sunset","tag-technique"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/john-ellsworth-heading-home-e1498397821632.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5bW7P-3i","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnellsworth.com\/imagetalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}