While I was disappointed at the lack of clouds to give an interesting sunset, there was enough junk in the air to allow for some photography looking directly at El Sol without too much risk of permanent vision loss and equipment destruction. The lighting was still pretty harsh while the sun was high in the sky, even with a 3 stop graduated neutral density filter on.
But once it hit the horizon, the sun really softened, allowing for some pretty decent shots. You can see by the increasing definition on the towers that the lighting got pretty even towards the end. I'd have liked to have kept the towers more silhouetted in the later shots, but I wanted to keep the gradient of color in the sky and was afraid that the filter would dull it.
Going...
Going...
Pretty much gone...
Thanks to the swarms of mosquitoes that pretty much sucked me dry, I elected not to stay after the sun set, as it looked like it would be a long wait for the deep residual color I love to shoot. And the sky was light enough I wasn't sure how much of a show I'd get anyway. So I packed it up and went home.
For geekphotostats. all of these were shot with my F5 and 80-400mm VR lens on Velvia 50 slide film. I don't have the exposure settings, but if anyone is desperate for them I can do an exposure data download.
