Waiting for still water
A reflection needs calm water, and calm water usually arrives about ten minutes after you have decided to go home.
That is the whole craft of landscape photography, more or less. You scout a spot, you frame it, and then you wait for conditions that are entirely out of your hands.
So I arrive early. Tripod up, composition locked, focus set. When the wind finally drops there is often a window of two or three minutes, and that is not enough time to start solving problems.
The frame I plan at sunset is almost never the frame I take home.
The light keeps changing while you stand there, which is reason enough to stay. The frame I planned at sunset is rarely the frame I take. Twenty minutes after the sun is gone, the sky turns a colour you cannot see until the exposure is long enough to record it.
Cold hands, wet boots, and one picture. It still works out in favour of staying.
From this story
What it comes down to
- Set up long before the light is right
- Lock the composition so you can react to the window
- Stay twenty minutes after sunset
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