Taking Great Canoe and Sunset Pictures

A canoe, glassy water, and a sunset go together like bananas, ice cream, and whipped cream. But unlike the quickly fading delight of savoring a banana split, capturing a sunset in a picture allows for sharing and enjoyment for years.

Sunset pictures are tricky. Typically, like in the pictures below, you can capture either the detail and color in the sky and have the canoe go dark and black or your can make the canoe light and visible, but lose the color in the sky. Using a Graduated Neutral Density filter, you can capture both a colorful sky and a detailed foreground and end up with a picture like the one to the right.

Required Gear

• 3-stop reverse ND Grad
• A high-quality camera
• A wide-angle lens, such as a 16-35 f/2.8
• A filter holder for the front of your camera

ND Grad Filters

ND grads darken the sky and keep the ground bright. To use them you attach the filter holder to the front of your lens and then insert the filter. Then you move the filter up and down until it is even with the horizon or the edge of the lake.

These filters allow you to detail in the sunset or sunrise and still be able to see the canoe.

Composing Canoe and Sunset Pictures

The canoe should be the star of the photo in your canoe sunset photos. To make this happen, you’re going to use a technique called near/far. In near far, the canoe features prominently in the foreground (or the bottom of the shot). Then it should point at a slight angle out to the horizon. The key is that the horizon should be interesting.

You can see an interesting horizon in the below photo. It includes islands and a beautiful sunrise lighting up the clouds in a purple glow.

Using ND Grads and Composition for a Great Photo

To pull all this info together, get a campsite with a sunset view. Find an interesting place to take a picture from. For mine, I like rocky shorelines. Set your camera up on a tripod.

Maneuver the canoe around until it becomes a line pointing to the horizon. Angle it slightly. Put your ND Grad on your camera and line it up so that the transition disappears into the trees. Take a picture.

Make sure that your exposure looks good with a properly exposed sky and detail in the foreground. If it doesn’t look good, adjust exposure compensation until you have detail in the sky and foreground. If you still can’t bring everything into an even exposure, use the next darker ND Grad.

Notes:

• Even on a calm day, if your boat is floating, it’ll drift around. You can use rocks to stop it from drifting. Or even a painter!
• Compose your shot to include the entire reflection of the canoe for more impact.
• Wait around even after the sun sets completely, because you may get better color in the sky then. During this sunset, the clouds changed shape and color considerably. I have pictures from the sunset that look so different, you’d hardly be able to tell they’re from the same sunset.
• Take a bunch of different pictures from different angles using both horizontal and vertical framing.
• You can do this technique digitally by capturing a properly exposed sky in one picture and foreground in another and then combine them with a gradient mask in Photoshop. This is called bracketing. You could even blend them using HDR.