Sunset Light Study Arizona

Sunsets in Arizona are one of our states selling points for tourism worldwide. Here’s a sunset light study with a rare shot of the Superstition Mountains face with light being cast through a narrow opening of clouds. The sun is falling behind the Goldfield mountain range, behind the camera, yet to settle below the horizon.

It starts off as a brilliant copper glow and gradually shifts towards the natural sanguine, sepia, and burnt umber hues. During a thick monsoon season we get the large cumulus clouds hanging above. This year as been a bit off, but stay tuned I’ve been keeping my eye on it with the NOAA app and on the ground visuals.

The video below starts with the natural color to create a better loop. The images above is how I capture it and I created the video by tweening 20 frames between each image.

Golden Hour

Kapow! Here’s the sun setting through the clouds between the mountain peaks. I like the initial photos where it appears the sun has a crown. I was using the 50mm 1.8 on a Canon D2000/T7i. The first few photos are using f/22, a small aperture, and high speeds to create the beams of light. Later on in the study I was looking to capture more foreground and slowed the speed down using the same aperture.

Here’s the light behind the camera. I was actually catching different stages of the sun setting behind a line of clouds. The clarity of the setting sun is diffused by the atmosphere of dust, Phoenix pollution and clouds along with the slower speeds. This is an HDR composite and I could probably use any of the image above to fake the funk. I purposely chose a mountain ridge as a background to easily align any future production work.

Before the Golden Hour

Here’s where I started to capture the light before going on a quick hike to find some critters and better foreground. I knew the sun would create some spectacular colors between the peaks and clouds in about 30 minutes to an hour. This is a composite image of the Goldfield Mountain range. The image was stitched between separate HDR composites top and bottom. The mountains made for an easy alignment.

The Gambit’s Quail below is about all the critter action I was able to capture. It had a line of chicks running behind it that skillfully disappeared into the brush. The giant Black Tail Jack Rabbit got away before I could focus on it. No picture, it didn’t happen right?

I thought if I just setup for the sunset in their foraging area, maybe just maybe, they would come out for a photo shoot. Instead they kept me company in the brush with their little quail noises. I had a few minutes before the sun made it’s grand appearance and flipped into video mode. I need to work on video setting on my camera, but this is a sample of the quails and other birds settling in for the night.

Blue Hour

Before leaving I captured what was left of the light. The photo below was taken during the transition of golden hour to the blue hour I suppose. The mountain shadows make the foreground difficult to work with. I was thinking if I had a model this would require lighting to be setup. Yes, I went a little overboard editing this.

Here’s an example of a softer image of the Phoenix skyline that required less editing. This was taken with a full-frame sensor and captures more pixels and subtle light gradients. It was capture using the 50mm 1.2L, which the combo makes a big difference.