Chasing the Sunset

With the weather for most of the day having been clear and sunny, I was looking forward to getting out and taking a sunset photo. However, a couple... more

by Alexis Birkill

Title

Chasing the Sunset

Artist

Alexis Birkill

Medium

Photograph

Description

With the weather for most of the day having been clear and sunny, I was looking forward to getting out and taking a sunset photo. However, a couple of hours before sunset, the clouds started to roll in over Vancouver. Unusually, instead of coming in from the west, as they usually do, they instead came in from the north east.

I decided to chance my luck, as it looked quite clear to the west, so I headed over to Wreck Beach, near UBC. However, it wasn't long before the clouds were overhead and I was driving through drizzle!

Arriving at the top of the 482-step trail down to the beach, I could see through the trees that there was still a chance of an interesting sunset, so I hurried down to get set up. The dark rain clouds had moved almost entirely over the sky by now, and I was kept busy wiping rain spots off my filters, but just before the clouds reached the horizon, the sun set low enough to become visible.

I shot this in a couple of feet of water (it's been quite a while since I've photographed a seascape and not come back soaked through!), with a three-stop graduated ND filter to control the bright light on the horizon. A narrow aperture of f/16 provided a wide depth of field and gave the starburst effect, and a 1 second shutter speed captured the motion of the waves as they rushed past.

Uploaded

February 2nd, 2014