Hyde Park Sunsets

So as you may have guessed, I do love a good sunset for photographic subject material. Earlier in the year I bought a couple of tinted grad filters from SRB, an engineering company who make a number of photographic products.

Over this year I bought an amber, a mauve and a special twilight filter (blue and pink).

There’s of course 2 ways of doing this. One is enhancing the natural colour of the skies in question. The second, going crazy.

I’ve done both…

The first set of Photos, above, were take in May using the amber and mauve filters in combination. Though the effect is quite intense here these are very much in keeping with the natural colours that are present in the skies, bringing out the drama, but in a way that seems to me more natural than processing.

This next set taken in June are a bit more artificial. The sun ins much higher in the sky and the clouds more white, giving a more artistic and otherworldly effect, like a graphic novel.

I went overboard on these images from September, with the twilight filter, so much so that they were too saturated to print and went very blocky as there was too little gradation in the colour space at those saturation levels. But digitally they are quite insane, and very much not born of reality.

These last few, again from september were actually filterless – though I’ve bumped the saturation again. The clouds here remind me of Bespin.

Getting a few, even cheap, tinted grad filters is a breat way to add a bit of inspiration from time to time.