On one of my visits to the US I drove form San Francisco over to South Lake Tahoe. It is almost a different world when you arrive there coming in from San Francisco; everything is more like Switzerland. I wish I found this place a lot earlier than 2 years ago after the Thanksgiving weekend.
All that know me are aware of the fact that I will almost every year to San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving with my friends from San Anselmo. I know the city and the surroundings there almost like I know where I live back home in Switzerland. There is not much to explore for me anymore. I think I have made my all time favorite photograph of San Francisco over at the pier one on a rainy day – click here to see the post with its photograph.
Anyway, back to South Lake Tahoe! When I have arrived there I was looking thru all social media channels that I could find to get the best location to take photos around South Lake Tahoe. Sometimes it is not that simple because I had to find the location and of course it was on the wrong side of the lake. What is wrong with the other side of the lake if the location is great? Sunset will then be on my back and I wanted to have the camera pointing towards the sunset. Finally I found the location in the photograph below, it is called “The Bonsai Rock” – and I was not the only photographer there; this is by why the Bonsai Rock is not in the photo, but it is close to the location where Bonsai Rock is…
Photography Tip: Sunset Photos
Maybe a good tip would be to get there early enough to get a good spot 😉
I usually underexpose my photographs a little bit to get that extra drama in the sky and make the color pop. The whole photo will become a little more melancholic. You can achieve the same effect when you post process the photo later using your software by decreasing the “Exposure” slider and play a little with the white balance of the photo.
Another thing I am looking at is the horizon of the photograph. I almost never put the horizon in the middle of the photograph unless there is a perfect symmetrical reflection (or some other symmetries) that make the photo look stunning. I usually try to get either the sky or the bottom by one third and leave the rest one by the other two thirds – it really depends on the foreground.
