In the few years leading up to and including Covid, our go-to holiday spot was an old set of cottages up the hill from Tintagel in Cornwall. That spot afforded us some of the most dramatic views of a sunset I’ve ever experienced, as there was a field facing west, where we could see the sun hitting the water (I’m sure it also helped we would usually go there in late June, on or near the summer solstice).
| Kit List |
|---|
| Canon EOS 60D |
| Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM |
| iPhone XS |
In 2013, we stayed near a farm, which provided the foreground to the sunsets. In 2018, we stayed in our now traditional spot, and were blessed with a sunset almost every evening. So when we returned in 2019, I decided to come a bit more prepared, and brought with me a graduated ND filter to have more control compared to the standard ND filter I used the previous year. The idea being, I could darken the sky but not the ground, making for a better balanced exposure. I didn’t use it in all of the shots – and truth be told, after seven years I don’t remember for sure which shots I did use it in – but it was another thing to have in the kit bag (and another ‘proper’ way of doing things I don’t often bother with).
This year, at least to start off with, some cows provided the foreground detail to the setting sun.
Clearly, I struggled a bit with the exposure here, so the foreground is a bit dark. I tried to shorten the exposure to get it brighter, but even cows move a bit quickly for a 1/30th exposure, because there’s some blur.
I decided to deal with the issue by using my phone, which came out better, but still not quite what I was after.
Eventually the cows by the fence wandered off and I could use one of the ones having some dinner further back in the field as a little foreground element.
Soon I was completely distracted by the sky anyway.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I was doing with the settings here. A one second exposure at f/22 was not necessary for this shot. I suspect, because I was shooting in Manual, that I simply failed to change the settings from whatever I was trying to capture with the cows. Regardless, this was one of the last shots of this evening.
The next day, there were some other cows in the field.
For most of these shots at this point, I think I was exposing for the sky, and trying to recover shadow details in the edit. Not the best way to do things I know, but I was younger then, more naïve.
As you can probably see from the shot above, the sky was a lot more golden on this occasion.
The next day brought no decent sunset (or it did and we were out somewhere, I forget). The day after, though, brought yet another style of sunset. This time, we had some wispy clouds adding atmosphere.
The sun itself looked impressive, but it didn’t light up the sky in the same way. I attempted to get some foreground detail using a picnic bench, which helped show how muted it was.
There was a band of cloud on the horizon which made the sunset look a bit dull, although no less interesting.
But that, unfortunately, was that. Unlike previous years, the week we were there this time we were only blessed with interesting sunsets on less than half of the days! I attempted to file a complaint, but turns out no-one is in charge of sunsets. Who knew?
As ever, there are a few extra shots in the gallery below.
