Sunset over Lake 33 at Busch Wildlife Preserve, just outside of St Louis Missouri.
Sunset over Lake 33 at Busch Wildlife Preserve, just outside of St Louis Missouri.
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo at Lake 33 at Busch Wildlife Preserve near St Louis Missouri.Time
This was taken on 26 Dec, 2014 at about 6 pm. A friend and I had been running around St Louis all day shooting other things, but hadn't really gotten anything spectacular. We made a spur of the moment decision on the drive home to stop at Busch Wildlife and to see if we could any good photos of sunset and managed to get in place and set up right before the sun starting disappearing below the horizonLighting
I was hoping to get shots of the fading light just poking through the cloud cover, but the clouds were a little too sparse for that. What we go instead was that nice orange glow through the clouds and off of the lake.Equipment
This was shot with a Nikon D5100 and a Nikkor 35mm lens. I had the camera mounted on a Alta tripod.Inspiration
I hadn't had a very good day of shooting. I wanted to try to salvage at least a few good shots from that day and knew that Busch Wildlife usually had some good places and as we were driving the sky was starting to look real interesting, so we made a spur of the moment of the decision to rush over to one of the largest lakes and hope we got in place in time.Editing
Since this was an HDR shot, I had to merge the 5 individual shots together into one. After that I cropped and slightly tweaked the color channels to bring out the orange in the sky and water a little more.In my camera bag
I currently carry a Nikon D750. I prefer prime lenses and usually have a 28mm, 50mm, and 85mm in my bag. Depending on what I'm planning on shooting that day a 70-300mm may find its way into my bag. I also carry the usual odds and ends; extra SD cards, spare batteries, lens cleaner pens, various filters, etc.Feedback
I definitely recommend trying to get in place earlier than we did. Had we gotten there a couple minutes later than we did, I wouldn't have gotten the photo that I did. That orange glow that appears in the sky and lake were gone moments after I captured the sequence of photos that went into the final shot. Timing is so critical, its better to have be in place early and have to wait than to get there late and miss a spectacular sunset.