Predicting good sunset?

[Steve Smith]

It's easy. If I'm out with a camera, it will be boring. If I stay at home, spectacular.

Actually, I'm only eight miles away from here: http://katiesilcox.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/where-are-the-worlds-best-sunsets/


Steve.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20496048_3,00.html ^_^

If you want the good stuff, gotta go up to Farmington over by the San Juan Coal plant. Now those are sunsets!

Oh, kewl. Color in the skies AND the lungs.

 

[Peter Simpson]

On-coming storms or just-clearing storms are fairly good indicators.

That's the advice I was given -- the evening after a big storm.

 

[flyinfiddlesticks]

That's the advice I was given -- the evening after a big storm.

Storms? Interesting. Now that the April showers arent too far off in Bangalore, I will check this out! (then again, it might just be cloudy for days, lets hope not!)

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Building or passing storms. Be there (safe and dry!) before, during and after.
Also remember, "red sky at night, shepherd's delight; red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning." [~Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs]
Atmospheric smog from big cities will interfere with the clarity and nuances of colour in sunsets (not so often in sunrise). Go far, far away from big cities, the more remote the better.
A lot of the time it will be down to pot-luck: you being there with the camera ready for the unexpected. If nothing happens...oh well, there's always tomorrow...

 

[Prest_400]

For a couple of weeks, I've seen three or four good sunrises.

A great part of my daily commute happens to be right in the coast (mediterranean, Barcelona), right where many tourists love to go down the beach. It's a great sight for the morning commute, with very nice seascape, but impossible to take pictures of.

The first one was particularly impressive, lovely to see the light building up. Hold a very orange-red on the sunrise side, and pinkish-violet on the other side of the sky. For the whole of it. Really nice. Sadly I entered the tunnels before it completely decayed.
Cirrus give good sunsets, but sometimes, those stratocumulus that hold a very strong orange-red are more impressive.

As of sunsets, they are quite nice, but not particularly impressive. Here, seemingly, Colours get much better at twilight, not when the sun is touching the horizon.

 

[Nige]

I always look in the opposite direction to gauge. If the clouds have a glow then there's a good chance the sunset will be decent.

 

[batwister]

Use a Graduated ND filter + Velvia 50?

Yeah, every frame of Velvia has a superimposed sunset now. All the photographer has to do is find a round boulder for the foreground.

Agree with the storm suggestion.

 

[Klainmeister]

Yeah, every frame of Velvia has a superimposed sunset now. All the photographer has to do is find a round boulder for the foreground.

Agree with the storm suggestion.

I prefer grass or something artsy, like a decaying car.

 

[batwister]

I prefer grass or something artsy, like a decaying car.

I think you're on to something there.

Note the film type

 

[Maris]

I've virtually given up sunsets unless they are over a lake or the sea. The reflection off the water delivers two sunsets for the price of one. And it's a sure way of avoiding the dreaded "amateur" sunset...colourful stuff in the top of the frame, amorphous black mass in the bottom half!

 

[Klainmeister]

I think you're on to something there.

Note the film type

YES!!! Now we're talking. I'll be famous!

 

[DREW WILEY]

A good sunset is any day I'm not stuck in the evening freeway commute. Ideally, I'm camped beside a
10,000 ft lake in the High Sierra with no one else around for fifteen miles in any direction. Those sunsets are always the best.