Suns

It's not the size of the boat it's the motion of the ocean. In photography it's using the right boat at the right time. Sometimes it's big and sometimes it's small. We recently did some sunset and sunrise shots at Indonesia's most western tip, Pulau Weh.

Shooting the sun ins inherently quite hard. Despite it's large size it's so far away from earth that even with what is shout to be a clean shot one might miss. After all there are subspace anomalies, solar winds, orbiting bodies and the bending nature of light to consider. However taking a picture of it as it has in fact already long ago passed the tangent of earths horizon and our actual vision, timing it with a delay that coincides with it's light reaching us is not as hard. It's still a bit of a pickle though.

Sunset at Pulau Weh, Indonesia. Photo: Filip Marzuki

As the sun is quite the light source it naturally put us in a bit of a color and contrast problem shooting it. One way of combat this is using long exposure pictures. This is however a tad difficult with all the light. So bring those filters of yours. Also as it's fairly divided into a light upper part and a dark lower part, using a gradient filter helps too.

There are some differences between sunrises and sunsets. One is the color that one gets. As sunsets generally goes from a natural to a orangey color the sunrises goes from a orangey towards a bluish tint before flooding everything with massive light. Both phenomenons have a short window of time when it comes to getting those wanted shots.

Sunrise at Pulau Weh. Photo: Filip Marzuki

I wind the process of taking these pictures quite entertaining. For me it's more about what happens around and the human and natures interaction at these moments that amuses me more. Observing tourists going to and from the looking point to see or miss the sunset and sometimes even take some pictures of it. Even more interesting are the creatures reveling themselves during these hours. This time around I almost crashed into wild pigs twice and a bore once. The monkeys aren't so bad as they have the intellect to kindly step out of the way and not run in the direction of your bike, sometimes deciding to abruptly cross the rode while frightened. Other creatures one might crash into here on Pulau Weh are cows. Specially the ones that decide that the road is a good place to live and want to make sure you know it will defend it. It's all good and fine as long as you are in a big truck but on a scooter the cow could just as well a brick wall for all practical purposes of serious injury. Goats, birds, snakes, small children, and old ladies should also be added as random obstacles on the road. Naturally the accompanied hazard of various poo should also be included in this flora of animal dangers(and human too).