With the advent of the summer rains one often gets amazing sunsets. The summer storms often pass quickly and start clearing before it gets dark. While on safari always look behind you from time to time because, as happened on this particular evening, there can be skme spectacular sunsets in the African bush.

I had a group of professional photographers with me and we had spent the afternoon taking photos of hippo and water birds. The sun had just dropped below the horizon and a few of my guests felt we had got what we could and should head for home. I insisted we just wait it out for a few minutes as there were some high cirrus clouds and I expected a fantastic sunset. Well, we were not disappointed!

Now how to get that perfect photograph: Firstly it helps to find something like a dead tree, be next to water or have something of additional interest to make that picture a little more special. Next, how to frame the photograph: It's a good idea to have something to lead your eye into the frame. In this picture I used the shoreline, but a road will do, or a line of trees - anything that helps lead you in. I used a neutral density filter that was graduated. This helps with the exposure, making the sky darker than it actually is and thus allowing for some detail in the foreground. I used my camera settings as follows: 1/50th of a second at F8 - this giving me lots of depth of field - and a 24mm wide angle lens. I also under-exposed by a full stop to help saturate the light a little.

The result was fantastic.

Happy snapping,

Rod Wyndham

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