Saturday Sunset
It looked to be quite a spectacular sunset tonight. Or so I thought as I watched the sky getting more and more interesting through my living room window. Eventually, something clicked and I decided I needed to get out there and shoot it before it was too late. Really, it was already too late and certainly, with just 10 minutes until sunset, way too late to get to anywhere particularly good.
The only place within reasonable driving time from my house was a location along Blackburn Brow, which overlooks canal mill (AKA Botany Bay Antiques in its pre-pandemic life) and the Mormon Temple. Building works at the mill make it look like, well, a building site, so I plumped for the temple and in no time was lugging the Z7, 100-400 and a tripod up and down Blackburn Brow looking for a good vantage point.
Eventually I settled on one where the sun was setting right behind the temple, but I'd dithered around too long and it had actually set. Even so, I aimed my camera and shot a few rounds, ending up with just two compositions that I liked...
The first one fills the sky better, but I prefer the looser framing of the second. Really, I could have done with that cloud band extending just a teensy bit higher.
A circus has currently set up in the field facing the temple on the opposite side of the M61 motorway, so I scurried a bit further along Blackburn Brow to a point where I could frame both that and the temple and took another shot.
The light in the sky was really starting to fade by this point, but I think I prefer this shot to the other two.
It's a pity I left it too late to get to a more expansive location, there was some really interesting multi layered stuff happening on the other side of the sky that I didn't even have time to take a shot of. I suppose the lesson to learn here is, don't dither, just get out and shoot.
