One of the best things about living near the sea are amazing sunsets.

One of the worst things about living near the sea is that you get to see yet another sunset! At least I can talk a little about this image and make it worth your while.

Last night we enjoyed yet again another magnificent sunset and on surveying the beach and noting that the tide was out I immediately decided to work with the still pools of shallow water lying about. Working with a wide angle lens I was careful to keep the horizon in the center of the frame for the initial capture in order to hide the inherent barrel distortion.

You often hear about placing horizons either above or below centre as part of composition rules. This can however create unpleasant and unintended distortion in the captured image. If you are shooting with a very wide lens where placing the horizon where you want creates an undesired curvature, I would suggest moving the horizon to the point in the frame where it is perfectly straight and then later cropping it to where you really intended it to be. In this case though I wanted a centered horizon to make a feature of the mirrored reflections. The centered horizon did not however quite look right thanks to the prominence of both the sun and the jetty so I dropped it just a little.

Sure you can see elements of the 1/3 rule in this image if you look but I find that even though rules are a great starting point I ultimately create what feels right to me even if I can’t express ‘why’ other than with the image itself.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 492, Just Feels Right’ 1/80s f/18 ISO100 15mm