Photo: Caramel Sunset

[1]

This beautiful sunset caught my eye out the window. The skies here are just getting better and better [2]. I ran out with my wide-angle lens (the kit lens) and started snapping different angles of it. It didn’t look like this to start, but I stuck around for ten minutes and the clouds came together in this odd formation. It looks like cotton candy, caramel flavored. I found it really interesting that the sun was like a spotlight, because it was dark outside of the clouds as you can see at the edges of this photo.

I don’t have many angles to work with because of the trees in my neighbor’s yard, but this definitely works best for showing the origin of the light (at the bottom). I did most of my post-processing right in Adobe Camera Raw. To improve the look, all I did was increase the contrast and black levels, and then I added a bit more contrast with the curves tool.

Canon Rebel XTi [3], EFS 18-55mm [4], 1/100, F4, 18mm, ISO200, 2008-08-19T20:04:27-04, 20080820-000427rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG [5] or download the source image [6] (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License [7]. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com [8] or rxthripp.com [9]. Thanks!