A Colorful Coastal Sunset

Colorful Sunset along the California Coast | Sony Alpha a7 II + 16-35mm f/2.8 GM @ 16mm, f/11, ISO 100, 1/3 - 1.3 sec

One of the things can really improve your landscape photos are the clouds. So, I often find myself looking at radar maps and local webcams to determine if the clouds are good for a colorful sunset. On a weekend back in June, the clouds were turning out to be pretty good; however, I was not able to make it to a location to catch the sunset. Luckily, the next day, the clouds were looking just as good as the previous day. After work, my mom, my brother, and I grabbed some food at home before we headed to the coast to catch the sunset. A short hike and a lot of bug bites later, we arrived at a front seat to the ocean’s edge. Then, I set up my camera on my tripod and continually took photos as the light changed. I ended up changing my composition from a vertical to a wider angle horizontal when I noticed that more of the clouds started catching light. As the sun set, we took in the beautiful display of colors, the peaceful sounds of the ocean waves, and the cool evening coastal breeze. My favorite photo (above) from that evening was taken a little bit after the sun went below the horizon which gave way to some lovely blue tones. From my experience, the best colors always seem to happen just after sunset, and that was certainly the case this time as well.

Colorful Sunset along the California Coast | Sony Alpha a7 II + 16-35mm f/2.8 GM @ 23mm, f/11, ISO 100, 1/5 - 1.6 sec

Here is a vertical composition I took just as the sun was kissing the horizon. I was hoping to capture a sunstar as the sun touched the horizon, but there was no sunstar to be had. My brother was hoping to see a green flash, but we did not see that either. Nonetheless, this sunset was definitely a colorful and memorable one. For this photo, I also used an ND filter (at around 2 stops) by Syrp to slow down my shutter speed to get the desired motion blur in the water. For the first photo though, I did not need an ND filter to achieve my desired shutter speed as the ambient light levels were lower. And for both of these photos, I did some exposure blending in Photoshop with the bracketed exposures I took so that I could show the details in both the highlights and shadows without clipping any information.

Last year, my mom and I also came to this same location, but it was during spring time – so it was earlier in the year. It was interesting to notice the different location along the horizon that the sun set due to the different time of year. This meant that I ended up moving to a different location along the bluff’s edge when I set up my tripod so that I could have the sunset and the sea stacks both in the center of my composition.

Above, is a couple of behind the scenes photos. The first is a photo of my brother taking a photo with his phone and the other is a photo of my camera with the colorful clouds above. Also, below is a collection of some other photos from that evening including a photo of myself with my mom and my brother, a photo of myself and my camera setup while watching the sunset, and a few photos of some random products I also had in my bag.