When shooting sunsets, I usually try to capture their effect on other things, rather just than shoot a sunset itself, which is one of the most common clichés in photography. I can even tolerate a cliché sunset if it incorporates a context such as an impressive ship or mountain range in the distance, or a powerful, abstract anchor in the foreground. I’ll also exempt lovely landscapes enhanced by the afterglow of a setting sun from my list of clichés – because such images are not about the sun itself, but rather the colorful effect of the setting sun.
Just shooting a setting sun because it is “pretty” is a tired excuse for an expressive image. We’ve seen those sunsets over and over again. Must we make still another one? So why did I even bother picking up my camera to shoot this sunset from the balcony of a cruise ship at sea somewhere off Lands End, England? What makes this particular sunset picture a non-cliché? Because I think it tells a story that appeals to the imagination. A tale about a wispy cloud that just wouldn’t give up. It kept clinging to this setting sun all the way down to the sea, reluctant to let it go and watch it finally slip below the horizon. That little cloud, which resembled an artist’s casual brush stroke, is good enough to make this into a story telling image and avoid the cliché. Yet just as this sunset was about to touch the horizon, something else happened. The round sun suddenly became an oval sun – with the little cloud splitting it into yellow and orange halves. It’s obviously a trick of nature, an illusion – since I’ve never noticed an oval sun before. The only thing I could do was to hold my shot until there was maximum tension -- created by the smallest possible amount of space – between the sun and the water. I exposed on the sun with my spot meter to turn the water black and give the sun and sky gain maximum color intensity. And I made sure that I did not split the picture exactly in half with the horizon. There is more water here than sky, which avoids that static, balanced look that plagues so many sunset shots. Adding the sun-warping illusion, the little cloud that wouldn’t give up, and my own photographic decisions together, I feel was able to lift this sunset out of the cliché department and put it into my keeper file. Do you agree? Is this a story-telling picture or just another sunset cliché? Please comment. Thanks.