Shooting into the Sunset

Landscape photographers understand that shooting directly into the sun, even at sunset, creates such extremes of brightness and darkness that it is difficult to make a successful image. The foreground falls into shadow, while the sky becomes impossibly bright. What to do?

Photographers planning to shoot sunset in Grand Teton National Park face this challenge every day, because all views of the mountain range face west. While today’s digital software can help brighten the shadows and darken the highlights, it ain’t easy!

One approach is to wait until the critical moment when the sun touches the edge of a tree or a mountain in the foreground. If you set your camera manually to a small f-stop such as f/22, the sunlight will refract and create a brilliant sunstar. I like this technique, as it gives punch to the scene.

The Grand Tetons and the evergreens reflect in the beaver ponds of Schwabacher’s Landing as the sun sets.

Reflections in the beaver pond as well as the V shape of the trees that flank the mountains give this image a peaceful symmetry.

After this capture, I packed up my tripod and camera quickly, for soon it would be dark.