Sunset Over Perth: 18th May 2010

Yes. I know. Sunsets are really boring. Everyone takes pictures of sunsets.

I seem to recall reading—admittedly a few years ago now when I used to regularly buy and read camera magazines—that sunsets are the third most photographed subject based on button pushes. One of the reasons for this is that when taking pictures of sunsets one tends to take a lot of frames as the hues and angles change. I pressed the button 57 times just getting these four shots and I was only there about 10 minutes.

Anyway, just because I was there when it was happening, following are a few snaps of the sunset over Perth in Western Australia on the 18th of May 2010, or for our American friends that would be May 18th, 2010.

For anyone interested these pictures were taken using a Pentax K7 on automatic aperture preferred. The lens is Pentax’s 50-200 weatherproof ‘green line’ DA zoom. These pictures are kosher, which in photography talk means that the lens was naked (meaning it had no filters fitted, not even a UV filter), and no digital enhancements or filters have been applied. All that has been done is cropping and resizing. Even the levels have not been set.

Almost gone. That is the city centre of Perth over in the left third.

Just peeping over the horizon now. Due to the lack of light the camera has slightly overexposed.

Here I have zoomed in to the full 200mm and am picking out the layered cloud directly over the setting sun. The sun has gone down in the middle of the picture. I am trying to get the full impact of that beautiful gold lining on the cloud edges.

I have now pulled back to the widest I can go, which is 70mm with this lens, and am shooting to the left to pick up the cone hook shaped cloud formation. The sun has set at the very right-hand side of the picture and you can see the gold-edged cloud formation there that I zoomed in on in the previous picture.

Okay. I promise no more sunset pictures, unless I manage to get Jennifer Hawkins, Kate Beckinsale, or Summer Glau to model in the setting sunlight.