Sunset Sailing at Santorini, Greece

Sunset at Bauline Marina, Newfoundland

Sunset, Northern California

The sunset as viewed from my balcony in Northern California last evening. The range of colors in the sky was absolutely breathtaking! While I wouldn’t exactly call Northern California “tropical”, it did remind me of postcards with tropical sunset photos from Hawaii/etc.

This is another photo taken on my trip from Santa Cruz to San Francisco via the California coastal Highway 1 this past weekend. I captured this photo immediately after sunset, while the sky was still colored with lovely pastels and the light on the land was still very soft. There was also a light fog along the coast, creating a very nice misty effect in the distance.

This is also my first attempt at creating a HDR image. For those not familar with the technique, HDR stands for high dynamic range, and is the process of taking multiple photos of the same scene at different exposure levels and combining them to create a single image with better overall lighting and exposure than any single picture alone. Familiar with shooting photos and getting the sky perfect but the landscape (foreground) too dark, or vice versa? This is where HDR can help. You take multiple photos, one or more exposed for the sky, and one or more exposed for the landscape and combine them using HDR software to create a well-balanced image. The effect can easily be overdone, creating an unnatural or almost cartoon-like effect. I tried hard to avoid that here, please leave a comment and let me know whether you like the result or not.

You can view a larger version of the photo here.

This photo is taken at one of my favourite places on earth, a small island called Exploits Island in Notre Dame Bay, just off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The island was once a thriving community, but over the years people resettled to larger communities, and now the place is used entirely for summer cottages and a limited fishing industry.

The hill in silhouette in this picture is called “the lookout”, since it is rather high and looks directly out over the Atlantic Ocean. The sunsets are frequently breathtaking here, and this picture is a good example of that!

Caught a photo of this beautiful sunset while out for a walk in Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley, California this evening. It’s an amazing park, over 2700 acres in total and set completely in the mountain wilderness. Very quiet and peaceful there.

I took this photo in Conception Bay, Newfoundland in the summer of 2005. It was a lovely summer evening and the sunset was quite spectacular. The passing sailboat provided the perfect opportunity for a silhouette against the colorful sky.

Of note, this photo was lucky enough to be awarded a “photo of the day” award from Steve’s Digicams website in July 2005: http://www.steves-digicams.com/dpotd_jul2005.html. I haven’t entered many/any photos in contests since, perhaps it’s something I should try more often!