I hurried out to Neck Point on a May evening to catch the sunset. I hurried around to a position so that I would be looking west over the water and discovered that I had a very striking background to a silhouette of some people who had also come out to watch the same sunset. I snapped off a few quick ones and saw that the atmospheric conditions were giving a beautiful golden yellow glow to my pictures. I began to watch for an interesting foreground moment with the people who were out in front watching the sun go down. I was a long ways back so I wasn’t worried about them seeing me losing the natural body language of the moment but there was a sign in the way that kept getting into the frame. I shifted around and finally the people moved off to the left. I took quite a few pictures but there were two other moments that I really liked; the man and woman in the frame above sat at a picnic table and she leaned in towards him, (left), I really liked the body language in that moment. The other one was of a group of younger people; they were standing and talking and watching and the sun caught very nicely in their hair, (bottom left). In the end I liked the hopeful nature of the man standing, putting both his hands over his eyes and staring out into the sunset and the counterbalance on the left side of the frame that the silhouette of the tree provides. The last element that really made the decision for me was the fact that I had closed down my aperture and produced a depth of field that produced a sharp foreground and maintained focus on the sunset. The photo is really about the sun so having it dominate was pretty important. A few minutes later I got a non-silhouetted image of two people watching the sunset, and, each other.

-Russell Berg

www.seeingberg.com