This is sunset lighting on a stand of cypress trees in Caddo Lake, Texas. Often forest pictures are challenging because compositionally they can be a comlete mess. It's tough to find workable graphic designs that turn out to be successful shots. It seems in the swamps of Louisiana and Texas, it's quite easy to find beautiful compositions maybe because there is enough open water so you can move back from the trees to isolate strong shapes. I used a 420mm focal length for this shot on a 100-500mm Canon zoom, and my settings were 1/800, f/10, and with auto ISO I got 4000. I always shoot outdoors with daylight white balance, and this is particularly important with sunrise and sunset lighting. If you choose AWB, the golden tones we love so much about low angled sunlight are reduced to neutral colors. The shadows and texture characteristic of this type of light are still there, but the beautiful color will be diluted. Yes, it the color can be recovered in post-processing RAW files, but I like to see the beauty of what I'm capturing while in the field.
0 Comments