Oaks and Setting Sun, California foothills

Posted by Gary Hart (California, United States) on 2 May 2009 in Landscape & Rural and Portfolio.

A favorite evening pastime is driving the back roads that curl with the contours of the foothills east of my home in Sacramento. It's a rural setting, carpeted with lush pastures and decorated with statuesque oaks like the regal pair in today's image.

In a scene like this I'm most concerned about retaining the color in the sky. Oaks make ideal foreground subjects for bright, colorful sunsets as its their shape, not their detail, that matters most. So I compose the oaks against the bright sky to highlight their outline, and expose for the sky to bring out the color. In this image I dodged the foreground slightly to reveal a little of the green in the meadow, but did very little processing beyond that.

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