Graduated neutral density filters are number 1, 2 and 3 on the list of things required for good sunrise/sunset photos. Here's a sunrise of mine, where I needed 5 stops to hold the very bright sun back and let the foreground cactus through. I had a 3 stop and 2 stop graduated ND's stacked on top of each other over the horizon:
If you are doing a landscape / seascape and don't have graduated ND you can also use a tripod, expose for the sky, slow the shutter 4 stops and shoot a second photo to capture the foreground detail, blend the two together on separate layers with a mask on the top layer.
If you want to capture the ambience perceived by eye shoot RAW and use daylight WB as your evaluation baseline, then adjust in the RAW editor. Human perception is driven by expectation and in person we perceive color largely based on what our memory tells us things should look like. That's why in any light we perceive a white shirt to look white in any light. In person our eyes also adapt to make the faces look "normal" within the context of the ambient light. So when looking at a person in a front of a sunset we'll perceive the sky as warm in person, then shift perceptual gears when looking at the faces and perceive them more normally than the warm light is actually making them. To capture that same perceptual impression in a photo you need to find a good perceptual balance somewhere between a normal skin tone (i.e. what you'd get if balanced neutral to the flash) and the ambient color temp -- a warm "normal".
Finding the ideal balance will take some experimentation and different sky conditions will affect how the light hits the faces. For example if there are lots of clouds in the sky the reflected light from the sky the person is facing will be warmer than on a clear day where the setting sun isn't bounced off the clouds into the shaded side. If using hot shoe flash get a $1 Rosco sampler from B&H which is just large enough to cover the flash head and has the full line of gels. Experiment with 1/8 to full CTO orange gels on the flash.
Greene17 wrote:
I do alot of sunrise/sunset pictures but most dont turn out as well as I would hope. What is some of the must have gear for these types of shots?
That depends on what you mean by sunrise/sunset shots. Are you shooting straight into the bright portion of the sky during these times? Do deal with the huge dynamic range you might want to use a strong graduated neutral density filter or (in my opinion) shoot multiple frames at varying exposures and combine in post.
It would help a lot if you would share some of the images that don't work - we could offer direct and relevant feedback rather than guessing. :-)
GND would have saved this image. You could have also taken two images, one exposed for the sun/sky and the other for the foreground and merged them in PP. Personally, I spend way too much time in post processing as it is so I go the GND route and am very happy with my results.
Greene17 wrote:
Thanks for all the info Heres one that didnt work, trying to get the rows in the field to show some of the light but then the sky is blown out.
