Sunset near a beach

by Utkarsh Jagirdar
(Pune, Maharashtra, India)

I have this Nikon S10 point and shoot camera and had gone to a place called Harihareshwar (Western Coast of India).

The top right corner of the picture is dark due to an accident with my camera that has shifted the lens to a side and causing a shadow.

I cropped the image but did not want to lose a lot of it.


Sunsets can be quite a disappointment for photographers. On the one hand, while you are standing there looking at the sun setting, it all looks great. You wonder how you can go wrong with such stunning subject matter.

On the other hand, when you press the shutter, the result doesn't conjure up the same feeling as when you were there.

There are a few things that are needed – deep rich colours. Utkarsh's photo could really use some saturation. The colours are a little washed out.

Then there is foreground interest. Good to see that Utkarsh has included some foreground. But I think he went a bit too far. There's more foreground than sunset in this photo.

I'm pleased to see that Utkarsh cropped his shot. Cropping is a good place to start when editing a photo. And the difference it can make is amazing.

Don't be afraid to get really brutal with the crop tool. Keep saving your file as you go (with a different name each time) and if it all goes a bit pear shaped, just go back to a previous version.

My final comment here would be that this photo is a bit overexposed. The foreground would be better if it were in silhouette. Here we can make out too much of the foreground. Underexposing would also boost the saturation too!

Ed.

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• Read more about understanding exposure.
  
• Read more about how to crop a photo.