Shot these today

[Krystonite]

Anything I could/should have done differently?

[ELAY]

Lovely shots. You exposed very nicely for the light coming through the clouds. I like the placement of the lifeguard chair in the second; you could if you had the opportunity again experiment by seeing how your photo looks with more chair, or the chair in different positions.

Are you interested in lightening up the beach at all? Or do you prefer it dark? There are a couple of techniques you can use if you want to lighten up your foreground.

EL

[Krystonite]

I would definitely like to try and lighten up the beach next time. I'm new at this, so I was having trouble getting it lighter without having the sunset look blownout.


And here's one of the lifeguard chair up close:

[gmarques]

I think you have two choices:

1 - using a neutral density graduated filter ( maybe ND8 ).

2 - taking two different exposures, one exposed to the sky and another exposed to beach, and then blend the two exposures. This solution requires a tripod.

[Gengus_Khan]

I like your first photo. I like the way the sun comes through the clouds and the line between the grass and the beach. "Every time I see light through the clouds like that I think that I'm away to get a message from God! Or Monty Python"

[windrider86]

My preference would be the first photo cropped in considerable closer without the grass in the front. Perhaps lighten it up a tad and apply some sort of filter to bring out the colors in the sky

[ELAY]

It is hard to lighten up the foreground in a sunset shot without blowing out the sky -- as the poster says, a graduated Neutral Density filter is the best way.

But you can fake a graduated ND filter, and the exposure blending trick in post-production, if you have software that works with layers.

For the ND filter, here is a tutorial from Luminous Landscape written for Photoshop. The basic idea is that create two different copies of your photo, one adjusted for foreground and one for the sky, and then blend them using a masking layer.

As for the two shot combining technique, you can do it with a variation of the ND filter. Again create two copies of your photo, one adjusted for foreground and one for sky, and use black and white on a layer mask to combine them.

EL

[R.E. Smith]

I love these pictures, they are awesome!