Dont just pack up after sunset.

Low light is better than no light .
How many times have you planned a trip to a nice location to enjoy a great sunset and capture a few nice shots on camera, only to be disappointed as nature had other plans. Well.... it happend to me not long ago when I was visiting the pacific northwest coast. Specifically Rialto beach with its spectacular spread of fallen trees and sea stacks along the beach. It was late summer, luckily not a dull rainy day common to that part of the US. I thought i might get lucky to witness a nice warm suset peering through the seastacks. So I started walking along the beach while enjoying a whiff of the crip sea breeze approximately about a mile or two away from the crowd where i had parked my car. I was in search of a good spot to settle down to snap that perfect picture. I had walked along the beach not realizing the distance but very close to that distinct sea stack in the picture. I thought this was a perfect evening and i had all the ingredients from mother nature to witness a wonderful sunset. I setup my tripod and composed a decent shot. As the sun started slowly sinking to the horizon, a layer of clouds moved in just above the horizon neatly blocking the sun. I tried every which way to compose or out think the situation to get shot. Only to realize i was not going to get a shot. I started to laugh realizing how futile it was. So I sat down on the sand and watch the a faint glow of light as the sun dropped into the horizon. A lot of times, It is good to be an observer and enjoy the moment and not worry about shooting the damn picture. After a while..the light was starting to fade and i decided to pack up and walk back to that tiny dot along the beach that i assumed was where i had initially started. Along the way the waves were starting to make more of a roar and extended their finger up to the very edge of the beach. Rialto beach is (as I was told later ) quite popular for strong waves. At this time however,the light was beginning to turn a shade of blue that was truly amazing and surreal. About a half mile from the sea stack I paused to enjoy the moment and turned back to where I was near the sea stack, I noticed a fine curtain of mist develop above the waves and the light was truly amazing. I immediatly set up my tripod as I knew was going to be a long exposure, lucky there was not a very strong breeze, I carefully composed to include the sea stack in this mist and wanted to emphasize the waves lapping. Shot a couple frames by bracketing the exposure about 30 secs. The above was the result.
That evening, I learnt it pays to stick around after the sun has set. You are likely to see great shades of blude at dusk after the sun has sunk below the horizon.
Your comments are welcome. This picture was made with a 70- 300 mm ED nikkor zoom lens on a D70 body.
By Kaushik Dwarakanath

Tags & Social Bookmarking Links Technorati Tags: Houston Photographer, Kdphotoman, Landscape photography, Low light Photography, Houston Real Estate Photographer Backflip BlinkBits Blinklist blogmarks Buddymarks CiteUlike Connotea del.icio.us de.lirio.us digg FeedMarker Feed Me Links! Furl Give a Link Gravee Hyperlinkomatic igooi kinja Lilisto Linkagogo Linkroll looklater Magnolia maple MesFavs netvouz Newsvine Raw Sugar reddit  Rojo Scuttle Segnalo Shadows Simpy Spurl Squidoo tagtooga Tailrank Technorati unalog Wink wists Yahoo My Web zurpy co.mments