Sundown at Manila Bay

Sunsets although usually bursting with color and drama, could be tricky to capture with full auto settings on your smartphone, as where you’ll point to focus will be its reference point for exposure and therefore lighting. Shooting in Auto mode will either give you an okay shot with overexposed areas, or an underexposed shot with a hot spot and some lost detail- for this shot in particular. So, while still in Auto mode, I slid the exposure to under-expose it just enough so the bright parts of the sky and the sun aren’t burned out, yet I still have a lot of detail to work with. I shot underexposed with the intention of boosting the dark parts in post, which is what I did exactly using my Photoshop Express app in-phone. Minor tweaks on the contrast and color adjustment gave me exactly what I envisioned it’d look, so I got to post it soon after.

Takeaway:
As with a sun that’s quickly setting, you’re shooting under time pressure. So with this scene, I took several shots of varying exposure. Average, underexposed, and really underexposed, knowing fully well what I wanted to do in post, but also having a few back-up shots in case it doesn’t turn out as I envisioned originally. Here, you’ll have to think ahead a bit while shooting.