Sunset in the Dolomites

One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen is sunset in the village of St. Magdalena in the Funes Valley in northern Italy. I shot this three hours ago. As the sun gets low in the sky, the valley becomes shaded and the dramatic and rugged peaks of the Dolomites turn red/orange. At first, HDR is necessary to even the exposure between the sunlit mountains and the shaded valley. But as the sun sinks lower, the waning light on the mountains is diminished to such a degree that you can capture this with one exposure. And the contrast of color between the red sunlight and the cool tones in the village is stunning. It almost looks unreal. I shot this with a 24-105mm lens, and the settings were 1/1000, f/4, 800 ISO. Note that I used a large lens aperture to make the shutter fast -- thus insuring a tack sharp image without a tripod. Usually for landscapes it's important to use a small aperture for complete depth of field. However, if all the elements in the scene are far away (i.e. beyond optical infinity), then a large aperture is fine because complete DOF will be seen at any f/stop.