Late Summer Sunset

Sunday afternoon was the last official Sunday afternoon of summer and it was really nice for a change. The edge finally came off the heat about a week before and the high temp was only in the mid 90s F. When the weather starts “cooling down” like this, I start wanting to get out of the house more so I headed out to Inks Lake to hike a little and hopefully catch a little sunset action.

I already planned out where I wanted to be. On the southeast corner of the lake is a cove that has a lot of old dead trees still standing and I have always thought they reflected nicely in the water. So, I wanted to see how they would photograph at golden hour and maybe stick around for the post-sunset cloud show. So, I parked at the fishing pier and hiked the rocky trail out to this corner of the lake. The wind and, therefor, the lake was mostly calm and I was able to get the reflections that I wanted even though one of my ND filters was not in my bag. I just shot at a really tight aperture to drag out the exposure as long as I could. The photo below was shot with an aperture of f/22 and 1/5 second shutter.

My compositional idea here was to highlight the large dead tree catching all the sun to the left of center above and offset the really dark area in the middle of the photo with the brightly lit trees on either end. I did get the reflections I wanted even at only 1/5s shutter speed, though I did time the wind a bit.

A little later as the sun got lower and the light got really golden, I took this close-up of the old tree. I guess I am a sucker for an old dead tree in a landscape (or lakescape), because I really love the way this turned out. I hope you like it too.

Another benefit you get out of shooting at such a restricted aperture is that you get to find out how much dust is on your sensor when you go back to edit your photos. And it is time for me to clean my sensor as I must have removed two dozen dust spots in the sky on each of these photos. It’s easy enough to do in a program like Lightroom, but it is kind of annoying.

I did also see some wildlife at the lake. I had been standing looking at the hillside opposite the lake and when I turned around I saw the largest water moccasin I have ever seen swim right past me in the lake. I quickly grabbed the camera off the tripod and set it to User preset 2 (U2), which is my action preset. I got a few photos of the snake swimming away. Water Moccasins are a venomous viper and have a spade shaped head and they are known for swimming on top of the water with their heads up whereas common water snakes are generally submerged with just their round-shaped heads on the surface when they swim. And water moccasins are quite a bit fatter than water snakes and you can see how fat the guy in the photo below is.

Glad he wasn’t interested in me, I didn’t even see him coming.

The sun did eventually set with some high clouds in the sky. I watched the color begin to grow on the distant horizon and eventually light up the clouds above the lake. At this point I had switched to my wider 14-24mm lens, for which I did have an ND filter, so I was able to get some very long exposures to mirror out the lake. Below is a 30 second exposure and another Flickr embed.

I see a giant orange dove spreading its long wings across the sky.

Thanks for the read and find me on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonfrels/

25 thoughts on “Late Summer Sunset”

    1. Thanks. I am a sucker for a good reflection, except my own.

      If the snake had been slithering up on the rocks where I was standing, I would have been scared. But it was swimming by and mostly ignoring me. They eat fish and I don’t look so much like a fish. I was more excited about getting a photo of the thing than worrying about it.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. I love the dead trees photo! As I have said before, I wouldn’t think dead trees would make a good photo, but you work your magic.
    As for the snake photo, I have to admit that I do like the shimmery water in the sunlight and since I don’t see the snake’s head up close, its fine. It sure was a big one and if I had been in the lake it would NOT have been fine! Glad it ignored you.
    Yes, I can see the sunset spreading its wings, very pretty! We all really liked Inks Lake when we visited, wouldn’t mind going there again sometime. I hear there are armadillos there.

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