Sunset & Reflections

May day and beautiful weather meant a lovely day to be at the coast. The forecast for sunset looked promising, with small clouds around and with low tide due to coincide so I was watching as the conditions developed. The retreating tide had left plenty of shallow water, covering a broader area than usual and with it being a very calm day that water then acted as a perfect mirror for the reflection of the clouds and colours. In addition to that, because it was shallow, the ripples of the sand beneath were also visible.

I started shooting while the sun was still above the horizon, using my reverse grad ND filter to reduce the glare of the sun and retain the colours in the sky. The other great part of using that filter is that the clear lower part enables me to retain foreground detail.

When the sun sunk to the horizon, I raised the dark line on my filter to the horizon and the dark clouds lessened and the colours increased.

Absolutely wonderful conditions and just crying out to be captured in photos and I was excited to get home to download because i could see the results on the back screen of the camera.

Looking behind me while the camera took the above photo, I noticed that the small clouds were also capturing the sunset colour and that they were reflected in the shallow water and the sand ripples were more evident. So I turned my tripod around to look in that direction.

Always looking at how things look in the other direction, sometimes it's amazing.

Then I returned to looking at the sunset, moving my viewpoint to a different spot around the shallow water.