Saint John River Sunset

We are currently traveling in the Maritime Provinces, arriving last evening in Fredericton, New Brunswick. After a day of visiting some friends and some old familiar places we returned to our hotel for the evening. Rolande observed that the sunset was looking pretty good and that I should take some pictures. Good advice. I took the following shots from the balcony of our room on the sixth floor, beginning with this first shot looking up the St. John River in a northeasterly direction.

A classic sunset with strong contrast between the shadows and the highlights. It was getting dark but I was able to get a good shutter speed (1/60 sec) with an aperture setting of f13 and an ISO setting to 400. I lightened the shadows a little using Photoshop, but not  so much as to compromise the contrast. A picture like this looks best with the shorelines in silhouette. I also experimented with the colour balance, trying for a cooler look but found that the camera got it right the first time using the auto white balance setting.

Unlike the previous picture (backlit) the next one was taken in the opposite direction with the sun’s fading light falling on the subject. Consequently, the scene is much lighter and you can see all the detail and colour of the trees and shrubs along the river bank. Because I was shooting downward, I was able to limit the background to the river with no sky showing in the scene. The colour behind the tree is the sky reflected in the river.

Again, using an aperture of f13 I needed to increase the ISO to 800 to get a fast enough shutter speed. Although the overall scene is lighter, it is not as bright as the sky in previous one. The brightness of the sky in the previous picture determined the shutter speed needed to avoid overexposure, resulting in a faster shutter speed with a less sensitive sensor setting (ISO). The faster shutter speed in the previous picture also led to underexposure of the darker areas of the scene, creating the silhouetted trees and shorelines.

These photos were taken only one minute apart, so the ambient light was pretty much the same for both. I get two quite different results by using different camera angles relative to the light source.

This next shot features the tops of some birch trees along the river’s edge with the sky again reflected in the water. It is a very simple picture; it’s appeal in my view is the colourful, slightly rippled water behind the trees. Again, the camera angle is such that I can capture the colour and detail of the trees and as well, you can see some highlighting where the sun’s light is striking the left sides of the tree trunks.

Today’s last shot is my favourite, featuring the same birch trees from a wider angle. I’ve included the entire trees, the shoreline and a broader view of the river behind the trees. Again, no sky. I like the broad light spectrum reflected in the water from very dark to very light and from very cool to very warm. The ambient light is also sufficient to capture the detail and colour of the shoreline.

The camera settings were the same as for the second picture but this scene has a broader range of luminosity, consequently the exposure is limited by the brightness of the upper part of the picture. The shortened exposure has resulted in the bottom area of the scene being a little underexposed and as a result, darker. I was able to lighten the shadows in the darker areas of the picture using Photoshop, without detracting from the contrast.

The light was excellent this evening and I did my best to use it in different ways to achieve a variety of results.