Amazing Boston Sunset with Sailboats - c/c appreciated

eoren1

Had a hunch and brought my camera (and tripod) to work today. Became overcast about 3pm and started to lose hope. Went across the Mass Ave bridge and saw the setting sun show up as a red orb. As a bonus, a group of people were learning or practicing sailing and kept going back and forth parallel to the bridge. Used a tripod and my Canon EF 70-210 F/3.5-4.5 lens with -2/3 exposure compensation.
Look forward to your comments/critiques.
Thanks,
E

erich6

That's a nice sunset indeed.

You had a tripod with you so next time bracket your shots so you can combine them later in post-processing. That would let you bring up the exposure in the foreground so it doesn't look so dark.

If you shot these in RAW you may be able to recover the shadows a bit by processing two versions of the same shot with two different exposure compensation settings.

Thanks for sharing,

Erich

thdizzy

Erich made some good points.

I actually prefer #1 and #2 for the simple reason that the shots are balanced; sailboat/boats, sun, and city. Did you crop the width on #1?

eoren1

Thanks for the comments Erich.
I had been bracketing all of my shots just prior to these on the bridge. I'm still very much a novice at blending two exposure so, unless I have a very static image that can be funneled right into Photomatix, I don't bother with bracketing the shots. The sailboats were going to quickly and, in fact, the sun was setting pretty damn fast as well.
They were all shot RAW and, on most, I turned down the exposure on the whole even more to help bring out the color of the sun while trying to maintain the detail of the sailboats. I'll have to sit down and figure out the two exposure/blend thing and then will have another go at these.
Thanks again,
E

erich6 wrote:

That's a nice sunset indeed.

You had a tripod with you so next time bracket your shots so you can combine them later in post-processing. That would let you bring up the exposure in the foreground so it doesn't look so dark.

If you shot these in RAW you may be able to recover the shadows a bit by processing two versions of the same shot with two different exposure compensation settings.

Thanks for sharing,

Erich

eoren1

Hey Todd,
Thanks for the comment.
#1 is cropped - there was a building on the left that was bothering me so I cut it there.
I'll have to try my hand at blending two exposures from these Raw files (as mentioned above) and post the results when I have the whole thing figured out.
E

thdizzy wrote:

Erich made some good points.

I actually prefer #1 and #2 for the simple reason that the shots are balanced; sailboat/boats, sun, and city. Did you crop the width on #1?