Sunset

Most people love sunsets and one of the most commonly photographed things are in fact sunsets. I’ll keep this one short. If you’re shooting on a smart phone, it’s very likely things get “blown out”, or overexposed, so you get a lot of white instead of the orange or red. Here are two ways to handle this issue. Try taking the sunset through your sunglasses (sounds stupid and may look stupid but it will help bring the brightness down to a level your phone can handle). Also, try turning away from the sun…I know this sounds stupid also but the colors are often a lot more photogenic behind you in the clouds rather than straight at the sun.

And since two tips aren’t good enough, I’ll throw in this last one. Try HDR. HDR is a technique used by photographers to show detail in both the shadow and the highlights. In layman’s terms, that means you get a better exposed image by seeing more detail in the dark “shadowy” regions and less blown out “white” regions in your photograph. If you’re doing a portrait of a person or family shot against the sun, throw in the flash. This flash will help to fill in the shadows and prevent a black silhouette. It won’t let you do HDR when you do flash settings on an iPhone but at that point you won’t need HDR so don’t worry about combining all of these tips together.

Hopefully this one will help the majority of people without fancy cameras to find some great shots while watching the sunsets that everyone knows and loves.