Well, here it is, my sunset collection. I've been avoiding this post because, honestly, sunset pictures are easy. You would be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't have at least one on their phone. It's such a universally loved genre of photos because who doesn't love a good sunset? Some of God's finest brush strokes have existed in the western sky as the daylight fades, when we get some of the most impressive colors found in nature.
I absolutely adore sunsets, and I often find myself going to great lengths to see them (Editor's Note: "great lengths" here refers to "getting up from my desk and going outside for once"). There have been many times where I've stopped what I'm doing just so I can gaze at the sky for a few minutes. Seriously, sunsets are my favorite. Now that you know this, let me tell you why I stopped taking sunset pictures.
A couple of years ago I realized there were some fundamental problems with sunset pictures that I just couldn't get behind: they cheapen the colors, they flatten the depth, and they shorten the story.
Pictures cheapen the colors. This one mostly speaks for itself. No sunset picture has looked as good as the actual sunset. For me, the first things I notice about the sky are the colors. The breathtaking shades of pink and orange, with a wonderful fade into a bluish-purple, can be so vibrant, so rich in color variety and saturation. But when we grab our camera - or worse, pull out our iPhone - and snap a picture of it, the colors on the other end just never match up. The photographing technology we have does a wonderful job presenting the illusion of reality most of the time, but the intricacies of the colors of a sunset often elude it.
Pictures flatten the depth. This one was harder to put my finger on, and I'm not quite sure if it''s based in any amount of science, but I feel that pictures don't capture the vastness of the sky very well at all. My favorite spot to watch a sunset is at the top of the parking garage of my apartment complex, and when I'm up there it's easy to take in just how vast and grand the sky is. But a camera just can't capture that. It takes away from the richness of the sunset.
Pictures shorten the story. This is an odd one, but bear with me. Relatively recently I realized that sunsets were incredibly satisfying. I wondered why this was until I understood that a sunset has a story. It's an incredibly simple one, sure, but who said a good story had to be complex? The story is this: the sun starts to set, and then it sets. That's it. The colors change, the clouds float by, the sky becomes a deeper shade of blue, and then the sun is gone. The sunsets that I've actually watched to completion have always been better than the ones I've only been able to glance at. I get a satisfaction once it's over. I legitimately experience a sense of closure. A picture forgoes all of this to simply freeze the sunset in time. A sunset picture never resolves. It never concludes. It doesn't move at all. The story gets bypassed, and so what are you left with? The colors (see point 1) and the vastness of the sky (see point 2).
I understand that this is likely reading too deep into the psychology of this genre of photos. And I should acknowledge, of course, that there are many, many photographers who have captured incredible sunset pictures that are amazing to look at. The points above mainly refer to my own experience trying to take them, and they partially explain why I don't take them anymore. I say 'partially' because there was an adjacent realization that occurred around the same time that helped me resolve to never take one again. I realized that the cliché was wrong, and that tomorrow does always come. There will always be another cool sunset, and I should just enjoy the one in front of me right now. There were a few instances where I would run up to my room to get my camera, and by the time I got outside it was mostly gone. So I told myself I would just behold that which was in front of me and be at peace with never seeing it again.
Just enjoy the sunset, and know you don't have to take a picture. There'll be another one another day. Be there in the moment.
These pictures are ordered from my least favorite to my favorite, but none of them are really very good. I have a tendency to want to oversaturate the colors in an attempt to combat point 1, but it has its own incredibly adverse effects.
