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Here it is, just an amazingly saturated sunset through the bare tree behind my apartment building. Just to be clear, I did next to no editing with this, so this really is what it looked like. It was breathtaking.

After a few shots of the tree, I went to some less nature-ey subjects. It is important to note that some great pictures come out of really embracing whatever it is that you have to photograph, even if you don’t think the subject is particularly pretty. You can’t just hide what you don’t like, sometimes you have to just show it, and the honesty of the shot means something, I find.

To continue in that same vein, I took some shots of the barbed wire fence in the alley as well. For sunset pictures it is really important to have something more than just the sky in there, usually. You need something that the eye can grab onto that it recognizes. Here, the silhouette is interesting because it is angular and curved, and goes in and out of focus.

Another thing to keep in mind with sunset shots is if you want to keep the sky relatively in focus, along with a foreground subject, you have to stay pretty far back from your subject. Or else you will get a very shallow depth of field, and the sky will be out of focus. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Here, I wanted to give some sense of depth, despite the silhouettes, so I got a series of utility poles in the shot.

Another important thing with sunset photos is to expose for the sky. Even in sunset, the sky is much brighter than surrounding objects, so exposing for the sky will result in silhouettes.

Again, this is just using what subjects I had at hand, but they gave a nice, angular look to some natural, curvy clouds. Also, I caught a really good burst of  light here. Looks really cool!