A good sunset scene with a fiery sky is something that has been elusive to me. Sometimes the clouds would be good but I wouldn’t be able to go shoot, or I’d go shoot and the clouds would go away and dissipate, or I just couldn’t get the scene I had picked out to translate into a good composition. A few days ago the clouds looked good, and according to Clear Outside they could go either way, so I decided to try shooting this scene at a local park. I got to the location, I framed a composition that I liked, and I realized something: there was no wind. That is really rare where I live! The effect of this lack of wind was that the water was so still that it was like a mirror. Up until then I had always thought that images with near perfect reflections in the water were probably faked in Photoshop because I had never seen it in nature, but here it was. As the sun started to sink I started taking shots, and the clouds moved away. So I (still) didn’t get a fiery sunset, but I did come away with this nice golden lit scene with a great reflection in the water that I’m quite pleased with (no trickery).

Camera settings: f11 | 1/60 sec | 24mm | ISO 100