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Monday 20 May 2013

2005 Athens, Home Sunsets

You can never know when there's going to be an amazing sunset with amazing colors at an amazing place with your equipment ready for that specific 20 minutes of the day when it is neither night nor day.  Living in the capital of Greece, there are rare opportunities when you can combine all of the above while going to or returning from work.  Unless you can plan the day AND have lots of luck with the sky colors it is next to impossible (at least for Greece) to be at the perfect place the perfect time, but it can happen!

Being at home doing whatever you need to do, it is easier to check every afternoon for impressive sky colors and clouds at sunset, but you cannot compete with creative composition, since you don't have many options.  I cannot begin to remember how many times I checked out the sunset colors and sky to see if it was inspiring enough and worth photographing.  Even if there is something out there, I need to rush and prepare everything in less than 5 minutes.  There were many failures when I was a couple of minutes late from the glorious moment of the sunset and the best possible combination of colors was lost, but there were also many boring sunsets that were transformed into unique frozen moments in time.



Considering the sunset hunt in the countryside, hiking for the unique spot only to return with a dull sky, this is one of the few options available in disposal.  But do not underestimate the weather conditions. It is said that the most probable time for an unbelievable sky in the sunset is from 20th of October to 20th of November (and a little more than that, especially after rain has fallen and the atmosphere is clean) and from 20th of February until the 20th of March.  I have tested this theory the previous years and I found it very close to the truth, so I keep my camera and tripod near me around sunset time during those periods.



In addition, do not fear to play with the white balance color for more creative sunsets and boost some clarity to create cloud volume and separation and I don't have to remind you that NEVER let the camera decide (Auto) what you want to expose or underexpose in your scene. It is common thinking that a large aperture number should be used if there is foreground bright interest or you can expose differently and combine the shots (toast them together) in Photoshop, or even under expose completely for creating silhouettes.  You only need to experiment and with 365 sunsets per year you have many opportunities to improve yourself.

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