Kissed by the Setting Sun

When heading out on a photo trip, I will sometimes set myself an assignment - work on macros, play w/ depth of field - whatever might work for the destination. If I'm heading to a mountain meadow, I might play with macros for the wildflowers or I might play with depth of field highlighting one flower with soft focus all around, or sharp focus for the whole scene. For a recent trip to the Oregon Coast, I set myself an assignment of playing with shutter speed and the waves. I love the look of smooth waves that you get when you have a slow shutter speed and the Oregon coast is perfect for that. I will share some of my images from that self-assignment in another post. What can also happen while I'm out shooting is that I'll give myself another assignment - one I hadn't thought of previously. This second assignment was capturing sun stars.

Another photographer in the group was working on capturing sun stars which gave me an idea. While waiting for the ideal light just after the sun sets, why not see if I could create sun stars? I had already positioned my camera well before the sun came close to the rocks, but as I watched its progression along the sky I began to get more excited. Will the sun really "touch" top of the sea stack? Could I really be that fortuitous? I waited, I'd like to say patiently but I wasn't. I watched the sun's progress, the waves swirl around rocks below, a sea lion's head popped out of the water, a seagull flew between the sea stacks. Then finally! The moment I had hoped for - the sun began to slide behind the top of the sea stack. I had already set up my camera for the shot.

I knew from lectures and articles that sun stars are created when you stop down your aperture as far as you can. The star is made from the high amount of light -it leaks through the leaves of the aperture itself. The farther your aperture is stopped down the more intense the sun star. So I closed my lens down to f/32 and set my shutter speed to compensate. I metered off the clouds as they were the closest to middle grey in the scene.

I ended up adjusting my exposure slightly as the sun went down, but the end result was something I had hoped for and luckily got.