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CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF IMAGES BY THE RUNNERS-UP

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1st Place: Evening Rituals © SP Mukherji

Don’t pack up your camera just because night is approaching—you can create some of your best images during the last hours of the day all the way up to dawn’s first light. Try shooting gloriously colorful skies at sunset, city scenes just after dusk, swirling lights on carnival rides after dark, and the glow of a warm sunrise. Many of our readers have done that and more, and the quality of our entries is truly awesome.

Congratulations to our First Place winner, SP Mukerji, who has won a downloadable version of Image Doctor 2 from Alien Skin; to our Second Place winner Tom Crouse, who has won a downloadable version of Dfine 2.0 from Nik Software; and to our Third Place winner Charles Jones, who has won a downloadable version of AV Bros. Page Curl Pro 2.2. Along with these prizes, each winner will receive a copy of Complete Photoshop CS3 for Digital Photographers by Colin Smith and Tim Cooper. Be sure to take a look at the beautiful photos by our runners-up in the accompanying gallery, which you can access via the link at the top and bottom of this page.

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Sunset
Whenever possible, scout out a good location ahead of time. You have a very brief window of time in which to shoot. If you want to include the sun in your composition, you’ll probably want to use a long lens to give you a big solar disk. You may want to find subjects to silhouette against the sky and setting sun. Including a foreground subject will give your images a center of interest, can reveal something of your location, and evoke a mood. Haze or clouds can enhance the sunset by diffusing the light and making the sun soft enough to photograph, as well as rendering the sky with dramatic color. When you’re metering a sunset scene, be careful not to take your reading directly from the sun. Instead, meter the mid-tones in the sky, usually about 45 degrees away from the sun. As proper exposures are often unpredictable, you may want to bracket your exposures up and down for best results. If the sky is a little duller than you’d like, use an enhancing, sunset or other type of filter to punch up the color. If you want less contrast between the foreground and background, use a split neutral-density filter to bring out foreground details while still retaining saturation in the colorful sky.

Second Place: Kafka's Dream © Tom Crouse

Afterglow
Save a few frames on your memory card for a few moments after the sun disappears, when the sky may ignite with a final, brilliant color known as afterglow. Clouds take on a renewed surge of color, water glistens with reflected light and the land takes on a warm luminosity. As with sunset scenes, afterglow shots usually work best with some foreground interest, which will probably be rendered in silhouette. Experiment by shooting only the sky, and then the sky with a little foreground in your composition. If there’s a river or pond in the scene, photograph the water with the sky reflected in it. Exposures are tricky during this brief time, so bracket as much as possible.


Twilight
The hour or so after sunset is one of the prettiest times of day to find photo ops. Images taken in daylight’s last lingering glow have a dramatic atmosphere that can stimulate the imagination. For example, a dusky scene of a suburban street can be viewed as the calm end of a long day. If you want to capture city lights at night, this is the best time to do it. There will still be a little color in the sky to balance the lights, and structures will be better defined. The lights of buildings photographed against a totally black sky at night often appear to be disembodied lights in the sky. Again, your window of time in which to shoot is very brief, so choose a location beforehand. Exposures taken during this time are usually very long, so you’ll want to use a tripod or find another solid means of support for your camera.


Night
Many dramatic photo opportunities present themselves after dark. The nighttime world offers its own vibrant colors and excitement. If you’re photographing street scenes at night, you’ll probably encounter a variety of light sources, which will give you a variety of interesting colors. You can also create some great images with long timed exposures, such as rendering automobile lights as ribbons of colorful streaks. Again, a tripod is of the utmost importance. You may want to photograph star trails if you’re outdoors without a lot of artificial light. Place your camera on a tripod with the shutter locked open to its “B” setting. The exposure time will depend on the ISO speed you use and on the degree of effect you’re after. An exposure of 15 minutes with an ISO of 100 will render the stars as streaks, while an exposure of several hours will create circular star trails across the frame.

Third Place: Radio City Music Hall © Charles Jones

Sunrise
For those early risers, a sunrise can be a rewarding photographic gift. As with sunsets, sunrises are very pretty and it’s often difficult to come away with an uninteresting image. Sun and clouds alone are colorful, but you may want to add a center of interest to a sunrise shot, such as a tree or a couple walking on a beach. The rising sun may be very bright, so you may want to get into a position where the sun is peeking through leaves, or wait until it goes behind a cloud. A lens shade is highly recommended to avoid lens flare as much as possible. Early in the morning, you may be able to combine the sunrise with some atmospheric haze or fog for a dreamy effect. After a summer evening rain, get up early the next morning to see if fog has formed. And as with sunsets, you’ll want to use a telephoto lens (200mm to 400mm) when shooting sunrises—the sun never appears nearly as large in an image as it appears to your eye. Remember to take your meter reading from a bright area of sky away from the sun. And most importantly, avoid eye damage and never stare directly into the sun with or without your camera.

The photo opportunities from dusk till dawn are endless, so go out and find ways to express yourself creatively in these exciting photographic situations.


Take our next Double Exposure Challenge! Look for details on "Flash Photography" in this issue.

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CLICK HERE TO SEE A GALLERY OF IMAGES BY THE RUNNERS-UP

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Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to Lynne Eodice.